Mi Sueño Tupperware

In post-war America everything that people touched––paint, fabric, dishes, jewelry––could be made of plastic. But how did this first generation living in a plastic world learn to accept it as part of their daily lives?

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Episode 2: Mi Sueño Tupperware
Trace Material Season 2: Stories from the Plastics Age

[Rainbow Road Music]

Ava Robinson:

In post-war America everything that people touched––paint, fabric, dishes, jewelry––could be made of plastic. But how did this first generation living in a plastic world learn to accept it as part of their daily lives?

Burgess Brown:

From Parsons Healthy Materials Lab at the New School. This is Trace Material Season 2: Stories from the Plastics Age.

[Rainbow Road Music]

[Jazz music]

Burgess:
What are we looking at, Ava?

Ava:
You can’t tell?

Burgess:

Well, it sounds, almost... groovy? Maybe like the intro to a James Bond film or something? But I’m just seeing these colorful, hazy shapes.

Ava:
It’s absolutely groovy. And those shapes will come into focus...

Burgess:
And spell Tupperware, of course.

“It is the story of Tupperware. Tupperware, a plastic houseware designed...” Ava:

We’ll be telling the story of Tupperware this episode. But before we jump too far in––let’s start with the absolute basics.

Burgess:

Yeah. So, Tupperware is a brand of plastic food storage containers, but it’s become so synonymous with the object, similar to how people say Kleenex instead of tissues, people often say Tupperware to mean any food storage container.

Ava:

Yeah I say Tupperware even though I don’t think I’ve ever owned an actual piece of Tupperware. Do you say Tupperware?

Burgess:
Oh absolutely... like I call anything in my very well-organized pile of plastic Tupperware.

Ava:

For a lot of us, the name “Tupperware” transcends just the object itself––we think of who sold it, and imagine a stereotypical 1950s housewife all dolled up in a big hoop skirt.

Burgess:

Tupperware kind of became the butt of a joke decades ago, and somehow for a lot of people, that’s all it is, was, and will ever be. But all the while, Tupperware continues to sell.

Ava:

It was one of the first plastic objects to really enter the domestic sphere, and transform American homes. And how the company was able to get it there is certainly a story worth telling.

Burgess:

To help us do that, we called design historian Alison Clarke who quite literally wrote the book on Tupperware. And since Tupperware is not a company or a product that only lives in the past, we’ll be talking to a current Tupperware saleswoman later on in the episode.

Ava:
But first, the beginning.

[Music]

Alison Clarke:

I'm Alison Clarke, professor of design history and theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. So I authored Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America. And that was based on oral histories with Tupperware women and a kind of in-depth immersive semi-ethnographic historical study because I became really excited about the whole phenomenon and cult.

Burgess:

That stereotype of the helpless 1950s housewife we mentioned earlier––it didn’t sit well with Alison, and it was what kickstarted her research in the first place.

Alison:

I thought there must be something more to it, and as soon as I started researching, I realized that the Tupperware party actually offered firstly flexible employment for women that were otherwise precluded from the workforce and the labor market, and that they made friends through Tupperware that many women were isolated. What the corporate structure did for them was create a kind of sorority.

Alison:
I think as a historian, I was frustrated that the 1950s, particularly in America, is written about in a very stereotypical way about women, because it's okay if you're a union leader or a feminist, but these so-called “ordinary women,” I think there was this idea that they were somehow kind of second class citizens, because all they did was stay at home and they hadn't been enlightened enough by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. All they did was make sandwiches for their children and put them in nice Tupperware boxes.

Ava:

For those of you who might need a slight refresher on 20th-century women’s history and why these stereotypes were created, here are some very broad strokes: During WWII many American men were sent overseas, and women started working in jobs that were typically male-dominated. The government supported this as, hey, they needed someone to work in factories. This is the time period where Rosie the Riveter was used as a propaganda image. However, in the post-war period, when men returned home and America enjoyed an economic boom, women were expected to stay home again.

Burgess:

This was coupled with huge technological advancements, a growing middle class, and the creation of “the suburbs.” Before these advancements in technology, housework was a lot of work, and everyone knew it. There were no dishwashers, washing machines, or supermarkets stocked with Hamburger Helper.

Ava:

And in the 1950s, that remained the case for millions of women. But some families moved into the suburbs with all of these new technologies at their disposal. Through marketing and media, the public perception became that these middle-class suburban women, as Alison said, had nothing better to do than rearrange plastic objects.

Burgess:

But obviously, it’s never a good idea to look at history only through marketing campaigns and stereotypes. And when Alison started digging deeper into Tupperware, she found a much more complex and diverse story.

Alison:

In my book, I really, uh, tried to explore the idea that it, although the advertising imagery was about white suburban women and nuclear families, actually, that did not represent what was happening in America during that time, or indeed within the Tupperware corporation. There were divorcees, women of color, you know, lots of different ethnic communities that were involved in selling Tupperware.

Burgess:

Tupperware relied on everyday women to sell its product––it still does. Like other multi-level marketing brands you may have heard of such as Mary Kay or Avon, Tupperware isn’t sold in stores, but instead depends on customers buying and selling products to their friends and family. For Tupperware, the sales method isn’t knocking on doors or chatting to coworkers at lunch, it’s having a party.

[Music]
“We’re having a party, a Tupperware party...”

Alison:

So the Tupperware party wasn't the first party plan system sales technique. There had been Aluminumware parties in the twenties, but they didn't have this kind of pizzazz. Tupperware party was more about sociability, bringing people together. And it relied on a hostess, a Tupperware hostess opening up her home, serving drinks and refreshments, and then a Tupperware demonstrator coming and using that home place and the friends, neighbors, relatives of the hostess in order to promote and demonstrate physically the objects. And some of these Tupperware parties could be really flamboyant, like filling Wonder bowls full of water and tossing them across the room and showing their airtight kind of capabilities. They were really kind of hubs of sociality. So women that did feel constrained, that they couldn't do anything outside the domestic sphere. There was always an excuse to go to a social event under the kind of pretext of doing something domestic and good for their household.

Alison:

And I think the important thing about the party plan system was that although the advertising literature of Tupperware is this kind of all-white nuclear family, typical stereotype of the fifties and sixties, in actual fact, Tupperware just went wherever kind of social groups were particularly strong social networks. And I think that's why I became interested in it also from an anthropological point of view and understanding that Tupperware wasn't just a commodity. It actually was tied up in this really complex gift system.

Ava:

I think we can imagine the difference, right? If I came up to you, Burgess, and asked you to buy some product I was selling out of the blue, you would feel fine saying no, right?

Burgess:
Yeah please don’t try to sell me anything Ava.

Ava:

But if I invited you over, had a little party, cooked for everyone, and then asked you to buy something, it would feel different.

Burgess:
Yeah I’d feel guilty leaving without a least some small item, for sure.

Ava:

Exactly––so unlike door-to-door selling, Tupperware parties tapped into relationships that already existed all over the country.

Burgess:

So it was through this party plan system that Tupperware became one of the first plastics to enter the kitchen––at least in the numbers that it did.

Alison:

You know it went from nobody having Tupperware to something like 93% of American homes having it in their cupboard, which is extraordinary.

Ava:
93% is absolutely insane. And all from parties.

Burgess:

To understand how this seemingly ordinary plastic food container became so ubiquitous, we can’t just think about their specific shape or color, or how successful their parties were.

Alison:

I set out to study the material and then it quickly became evident that I couldn't understand this phenomenon without the biographies involved, because they were so crucial. Because they mediated that materiality to the American public and then a global public later.

Ava:

So Alison expanded her research to include the biographies involved––and by that she really meant the biographies of two people who really shaped what Tupperware was. Its inventor, and the marketing guru behind those very popular parties.

Burgess:
Earl Tupper and Brownie Wise.

[Music]

Ava:

They both had big personalities and specific ideas about American consumerism. But that’s pretty much where the similarities ended.

Alison:

Earl Tupper was a New Englander. And actually, although he created this Poly-T material of the future, as Tupperware was first dubbed, he was incredibly conservative as a person. He was a sort of loner and inventor. He had the vision of Tupperization and that lives would be improved. They'd be cleaner, healthier, more rational, a very kind of Protestant idea about containment.

Burgess:

Tupper thought of himself in the mold of men like Leo Baekeland, who we talked about in the previous episode. He, too, was trying to create new synthetic plastics in a homemade lab.

Alison:

Earl Tupper spent a lot of time trying to differentiate Tupperware from normal plastic. Tupperware was invented in the 1940s, mid-to-late 1940s when there were many problems with plastic. You know, it disintegrated on contact with vinegar and shower curtains would disintegrate in hot water. There was a whole kind of catalog of plastic disasters, really. And so corporations like DuPont were really trying to sell hard the fact that plastic was this transformative material. And so Earl Tupper had that vision of creating Tupperware as an exceptional product.

Ava:

So the chemical composition of this Poly-T stuff is a little bit complicated. Let’s throw it to our resident plastic expert, Jessica Walthew, for a mini-chemistry lesson on what made Poly-T special:

Jess Walthew:

Sure. So Tupper was working on creating a more refined version of polyethylene. So polyethylene is one of the main commodity plastics today. It's really the first plastic that's a thermoplastic. So it's softer and more flexible than the thermoset plastics that preceded it. It's the first like fully synthetic thermoplastic.

It's one of the most, in terms of the chemistry, one of the most simple molecules and the processing can result in a range of different kinds of properties, but most of the sort of commercial grade polyethylene tends to be this soft, flexible, even a little bit waxy, very stable plastic.

Burgess:

And it’s important to remember that the plastic that came before polyethylene was not soft or flexible. You could never have a burping Tupperware lid made of Bakelite.

Jess:

Bakelite, as we talked about before, is one of those things that by its nature, the phenol formaldehydes in their earliest formulations tended to be very dark in color.

Ava:

But in the post-war period, chemical processing was booming. There were all sorts of different new chemical products that just needed to be refined for a domestic market.

Jess:

So I think that there were multiple kinds of offshoot products from the chemical refining industry that weren't really suitable yet for consumer products of this nature. And so in the sort of like basic understanding of the process, he was working with derivative materials that were smelly and dark and needed to be cleaned up through chemical refinements.

Ava:
So Tupper refined it, colorized it, and hit the market with plastic that was both durable and flexible.

Burgess:

Unlike something that you might buy in a multi-pack at your local grocery store that gets a little melty when you pour hot leftovers in it, Tupperware is thicker and can withstand heat. Because of that, Earl Tupper thought it would be the perfect material to modernize the kitchen.

Ava:

Although he himself didn’t know too much about what would appeal to women or what they wanted help with in the kitchen. So he used his wife and other female family members as informal focus groups, and he also scouted the local area to learn about women’s culture.

Alison:

He went to a colonial fair on a visit to pick up ideas for new inventions and designs, and in his diary wrote an amazing piece about admiring this gentle lady spinning and weaving and how she represented everything that was good about America. And he was actually fairly fearful of women. The irony is of course his Poly-T material of the future rational stacking system of Tupperware bowls and boxes didn't actually sell until a woman came along and created the Tupperware party.

Burgess:

That woman was, of course, Brownie Wise. Before she came along, Tupper was trying to sell his new inventions to department stores and in catalogs with little success. He had primarily self-funded an entire factory, but his vision of a Tupperized America was just sitting on shelves getting coated in dust.

Alison:

Brownie Wise was an amazing character because she had just found a catalog with Tupperware featured in it. And had ordered directly from the Tupper factory in Rhode Island and created a massive stock. And she herself took it door to door and created Tupperware parties, and then contacted Earl Tupper and said, "listen, I've got a great, I've got a great idea for how you can sell this product on a party plan system."

Burgess:

Without Tupper’s knowledge or consent, she had started having Tupperware parties with women she knew in her own community––and she was making a living that way. But she could see the potential for this to grow beyond her own network. She knew she wasn’t the only woman with a lot of friends and few employment opportunities.

Alison:

Brownie Wise really did exemplify the rags to riches kind of stereotype of the American dream. She was a divorcee. She was abandoned by her husband and had medical bills to pay for her young son. And that's how she started selling door to door. It was only through that kind of drive as being an outsider, a single mother, a divorcee... outside the kind of suburban culture that Tupperware came to exemplify, that she was really driven to, to create this product as a kind of mega icon.

Ava:

So obviously, Tupper took her up on the party plan idea, and she ended up making him a millionaire. He hired her to run the party plan piece of the business, and she eventually became a VP in the company. Without her business insight, Tupperware never would have become a successful product.

Alison:

One vision I always have of Tupper's vision of Tupperization is his first catalog from the 1940s where he uses his own New England home full of antiques to sort of frame this new product. There’s a tea set made of Poly-T material of the future, this completely alien white polyethylene stuck by a New England fireside and it's completely absurd. And I think what that showed was how... how detached Earl Tupper was from any concept of how things become consumable. Whereas what Brownie Wise did was immediately eradicate half the product range and say, "these are never going to sell. They're useless. They don't fit into anyone's life.” These kind of spats over what this material and what this product meant, led to how it became popularized within the American home.

Burgess:

But while she was selling Tupperware and the Tupperware party, she was also selling herself. She became a celebrity in her own right. Many women bought into the Tupperware system because they knew she was in charge, they trusted her, and they wanted to follow in her footsteps.

Alison:

She appeared in women's magazines throughout the 1950s. And there were extraordinary insights into things like her eating habits, how she liked to snack on hamburgers last thing at night and eat ice cream sundaes, and that she liked to make her own sort of couture style dresses. She had her own canary that was dyed pink to match Tupperware bowls and a Palomino pony. She became this extraordinary cult figure for other women that would travel across America to Florida to visit her.

Ava:

Brownie would have huge Tupperware events at her lavish Florida home where Tupperware saleswomen would dig in her yard for treasure, and she would give away her own clothes as presents. Earl Tupper, of course, found this practice somewhat distasteful.

Burgess:

But to Brownie Wise, Tupperware wasn’t just about celebrating excess, she knew it was creating real pathways for women where previously there had been none. In addition to those wild Florida parties, Brownie regularly toured women’s and historically Black colleges.

Alison:

Thinking about 1950s, America, I think her, her appeal to black women in particular, and going to colleges, black colleges, and really nurturing the idea of Tupperware being something that empowers people, even if they are pushed to the periphery by mainstream society, she was incredibly sympathetic and empathetic in that way. I think it wasn't just a commercial kind of insight. I really think it was about a woman who herself had been in dire straits and recognized what this kind of Tupperware opportunity could be for people. Of course, the corporation is at the same time exploiting those relationships. But for many people, it really was actually empowering.

Burgess:

As Alison said, it’s complicated. Because obviously, she was travelling the country recruiting women to join a huge corporation that ultimately benefited her. But she was also just sharing a pathway that had worked for her and opening it up to anyone who wanted to join.

Alison:

I think the male management saw her as a woman that had way too much influence over other women. There was something unsettling for them about it, because so many women did admire her. She was, she was the first woman to appear on the front cover of Business Week in 1956, which was an incredible breakthrough, you know, preaching her the idea of the importance of the people and the party in order to create a good business.

Ava:

She had created an entirely different culture than what Tupper had imagined. He wanted cool, calm, organization––a more rational world. He imagined that Tupperware had a certain level of class. And she wanted to sell products that people actually use and enjoy. And although this culture clash had reared its head several times throughout their relationship, it ended up falling apart over a dog bowl that was never meant to be a dog bowl.

[Music]

Alison:

Yes, dog bowl gate. That was a crucial moment in the Tupperware story. A worker, a Tupperware worker spots that Brownie Wise is using a Wonder Bowl to feed her dog. And this information is fed directly back to Earl Tupper who writes angry memos about the misuse of Tupperware, because Tupperware should never be used for animals. It's this kind of sacred, holy material and object. And this basically this, this is the beginning of the downfall of Brownie Wise. Once she's outed for feeding her dog in a Wonder Bowl it's downhill. And she gets dismissed from the Tupperware company, having built it up into a million dollar industry, she is duly dismissed.

Burgess:

And that was that for Brownie Wise and Tupperware. She didn’t get what was owed to her for building Tupperware into the mega brand it was, but she quickly moved on to other business ventures.

Ava:

But, just because Brownie was no longer at the helm, it did not mean the parties stopped happening. And people’s specific feelings about Tupperware being special and a set above other more pedestrian plastic objects didn’t change either. The culture and brand she had created lived on.

Alison:

Right from the beginning, they sold it as a non-disposable object. It's not a single use plastic. You know, they’re heirloom pieces and during my research had many people wanting to show me their heirloom collections that had been handed down to them from their grandmothers, et cetera.

Burgess:

In the Tupperware system, you know the person who sells it to you. It’s not from an anonymous big box store. It has a specific memory, often a gathering of friends or family, that’s attached to it––and that makes it special.

Ava:

In a moment we’re going to hear from a woman selling Tupperware today in New York City. Something that struck me about her story was how similar her experience was to women in the 1950s. The camaraderie and community are still the cornerstone of the Tupperware brand.

Burgess:

When we were crafting this episode, we knew we wanted to talk to someone who was selling Tupperware today, but we really didn’t know who that would be.

Ava:

The good thing is Tupperware made it really easy to find people. I just typed in my zipcode and over 500 local sellers came up. Some people included photos, but most people just had their zipcode, their name, and what level they were in the Tupperware corporation. And I was immediately struck by something––now of course you can’t tell everything by someone’s name, but names can be used as a clue, and it seemed like the vast majority of Tupperware sellers in New York City were Latina.

Burgess:
Which tracks with what Alison found when she was doing her own research two decades ago in London.

Alison:

I think some of the most successful saleswomen I met during my ethnographic research, particularly in London were women from immigrant groups or ethnic groups that had, again, not much access through language or culture or circumstance to other forms of, of kind of networks of work. And so Tupperware for them was this fantastic means of really kind of utilizing their social lives to sell a product, but to also kind of reemphasize those social relations. You know, you had an excuse to meet people as well and an excuse to be the kind of hub of this social fabric.

[Imelda Reyes Facebook Video Clip] “Buenas noches, gracias, gracias...”

Burgess:

This is a Tupperware party in the time of Covid. Imelda Reyes hosts Tupperware parties on Facebook Live. She sells to her friends and family, and friends of friends, all online.

[Imelda greeting viewers in Spanish]

Burgess:

When we reached out through the Tupperware site, Imelda’s son Jose, who helps her run her business and helped translate for us during the interview, responded almost immediately saying how wonderful Tupperware has been for their family.

Jose:

My name is Jose. I am currently in Geneseo, New York, and I am Imelda’s son. I'm 20 years old and I am studying English adolescent education.

Imelda: “Mi nombre es Imelda Reyes...”

Imelda/Cristina:
My name is Imelda Reyes and I am here in New York City in Woodhaven.

Burgess:
This is our colleague Cristina, who graciously helped us with translation and will be reading for Imelda today.

Ava:
When we spoke to them, Jose had just gone back to college in Upstate New York and Imelda was in Queens, sitting behind a giant poster with Mi Sueño Tupperware in big black text and different Tupperware products surrounding it. The poster was boarded with beautiful homemade paper flowers in bright colors. It was the same place she hosted her virtual parties on Facebook.

Imelda:
That's the name of my page, it's called Mi Sueño Tupperware, “My Tupperware Dream.” And I decorated it, there, with little flowers, with the design of the products that... that I have here to be able to sell to clients. Look, I even put a lot of flowers on it so that it looks nice.

Ava:
Before Covid hit, Imelda told us she was working at a bakery, and it was a very different life––one that didn’t have any of the flexibility she has now.

Imelda:
Well, there are a lot of comparisons, right... because when I worked in the bakery I had a boss... a boss that I had to get up early for because it was a bakery. But in this business, I no longer have a boss, as our leader tells us: “You are your own boss.” Depending on the hours you want to work, the time you want to start, the time you want to finish. And the good thing about this is that it is from home. The work now is all virtual... everything is virtual... I start making my videos and from there I get... umm... a sale of something they want. But there's a lot of difference, in a job... than in this Tupperware job because nobody tells me what to do.

Burgess:
That bakery is where Imelda had her first run-in with Tupperware. She described an older woman who would come into the bakery on a regular basis and gather with her friends to sell Tupperware. At that time, Imelda didn’t get involved––she was already really busy with a full time job and raising her sons. But, she’d look at the catalogs and chat with the women when they came in. Eventually, after Covid hit, she did end up signing up with that very woman to sell Tupperware.

Imelda:
I worked in a bakery, so many ladies used to gather there when they went to school to drop off their children...so she sold to all those who gathered there to have their coffee where I worked... sometimes there were about ten people, so... well, each person, right, depending on what they had in their pocket, the lady would sell to them. But actually, she is now an old lady who I recruited with, and I am really proud of her because she had COVID and she came out of it and after COVID, I was recruited, because when she recovered, she started again with her Tupperware business, and that's when she told me: “Imelda, why don't you join the company and you will get a better deal? Because later you will get your discount, you will get gifts...” That's why I decided to join. Now, thank God, as our business leader says, I am changing my kitchen, why? Because it doesn't hurt to spend so much on a product because we already have our discount. My life changes and my kitchen changes too.

Ava:
The way Imelda explained the Tupperware experience was as a community of mutual support. She made sure we understood that there were no bosses and there wasn’t any competitiveness, and that she and the woman who recruited her, or, as Imelda phrased it, the woman who helped her recruit herself, continue to work together as a team.

Burgess:

When we spoke with Imelda, she’d only been with the company for eight months, but she’d already recruited other women. She also thought of them as an extended network, certainly not her employees.

Imelda:
I don't feel so much like their boss because I mean. I feel the same as them, right? We are consultants for Tupperware but well, me and my son are always sending them messages that they are going to miss this, that they are going to miss that, if they have a coupon... I mean... We are always looking out for those who are there with us in our team so that they can get the same benefits that I have from the products, the coupons, the gifts that the company gives us, so we are always looking out for them... but it is a team effort that I mean I... my son and I are always in charge but I don't feel like a boss, because I mean, no, we are just starting and thank God we have our team there that is always supporting us as well.

Ava:
Of course, Imelda is making money off her recruits, but most of the people she interacts with on Facebook are just customers. She showed us her favorite product that she uses in every Facebook Live, her top seller, the Power Chef.

Imelda:
This is a Power Chef, in this product we can prepare a pico de gallo, prepare a guacamole, make a pastry... this is a fabulous product. Now all of us who are Tupperware consultants... all of us use this product in every Live... this is the most fabulous thing we can have right now for our kitchen.

Burgess:
Imelda has very specific goals for her Tupperware experience. She wants to be able to win a car and take her sons to Disney World.

Imelda:
“Mi Sueño Tupperware” [My Tupperware Dream] is to work for my dreams, right? My dreams that I want to achieve. Everything that the company gives us and to achieve for someday. Everything that is good in the company, so to fight, to work for those dreams that I have in the future. I have the dream of being able to get the car, the trips. Those are dreams that I never had in my life... to go on a trip that the company gives us to go to Disney World, that is a dream that I have in the future to be able to achieve and to take my children. So that's why I decided to call it “Mi Sueño Tupperware” [My Tupperware Dream], because here I have to work for my dreams.

Ava:
Obviously, Imelda is having great success and enjoying selling Tupperware. It works for her and it works for many other women too. But that doesn’t mean everyone has such a glowing experience. When we spoke with Alison, she mentioned the burnout that can sometimes happen to Tupperware sellers.

Burgess:

Tupperware is multi-level marketing, and it comes with the pitfalls that many of us are familiar with when we hear that term.

Alison:

It's really hard to stay on top of those big figures and keep the ambition going in that area because you can saturate, you know, there's a limit to how many... how many bits of Tupperware your friends and family will purchase, so you always have to be expanding, expanding, expanding, but that's the nature of it. And the more you expand, actually, the more friends. And lots of women did talk about having Tupperware friends.

Ava:
In many ways, Brownie Wise’s vision for Tupperware is still in place. Without Tupperware, Imelda might not have been able to find another job after losing hers at the bakery to Covid. We could hear Brownie’s legacy in the way Imelda talked about empowering herself, and Tupperware being a community rather than a hierarchy.

Burgess:
On the other hand, Earl Tupper’s dream of a Tupperized domestic sphere didn’t come to fruition in the way he hoped. Yeah, our kitchens are filled with plastic objects, but I wouldn’t say they make the space more rational or orderly. When many people think of Tupperware, they think of a drawer filled with mismatched plastic containers with missing lids, not of everything in it’s perfect place.

Ava:
But Tupperware was one of the first plastics Americans put their food in or drank from. It brought plastic quite literally to our lips, and into our bodies.

Burgess:
And as Jess explained, Tupperware is one of the safer plastics, but most of us aren’t able to differentiate the chemical makeups of various plastics. So once Tupperware entered the kitchen, people felt more at ease bringing in other types of plastic.

Ava:
Absolutely, I mean it’s actually not something that’s easy to understand. Plastic often feels like one material to us, and I for one, didn’t learn the difference between polyethylene and polypropylene in my high school chemistry class.

Burgess:
Next time we’ll be talking about another type of plastic: polyvinyl chloride. People are often most familiar with it as something that lives under their kitchen sinks, as the PVC pipe, but it can actually be found all around our homes.

Ava:
And if you missed the chemistry from this episode, buckle up for next time, cause we’ll be going there.

Credits:

Hi, this is Ahalia Persaud from the HML team. Thanks for listening.

Trace Material is a project of Parsons Healthy Materials Lab at The New School. It is hosted and produced by Ava Robinson and Burgess Brown. Our project director is Alison Mears, and our research assistant is Olivia Hamilton.

For more information, head to our website at healthymaterialslab.org/podcast. And be sure to give us a follow on Instagram @healthymaterialslab.

Thank you to Alison Clarke and Imelda Reyes for lending their voices, experiences, and expertise to this episode. Alison’s book is titled Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America. We highly recommend it if you enjoyed this episode.

If you feel like you need a Power Chef in your life, you can find Imelda on Facebook at facebook.com/misuenotupperware

Trace Material is made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our theme music is Rainbow Road by Cardioid. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.