The omnipresence of synthetic plastics has become impossible to overlook. From macroscopic objects as everyday commodities such as packaging, furniture, cosmetics or building materials to microscopic particles that contaminate ecosystems and organisms, including the human body–materials that spread around the world like liquids and permeate every conceivable space.¹ 

The question of what happens to objects made of synthetic plastics after use has fortunately become a constant and ongoing discourse in product design, starting with works such as Enzo Mari’s Ecolo (1995) or Jane Atfield’s RCP2 (1992) leading up to projects like Precious Plastics by Dave Hakkens (2014) and Plastic Baroque by James Shaw (2020).

Despite this, or perhaps also because of it, global plastic production has risen by an estimated 400% since Jane Atfield's revolutionary chair design made from plastic bottles in 1992.² Forecasts predict a constant increase and a further doubling by 2050.³

If the plastics produced since 1950 were distributed evenly among all people alive today, each of us would have to deal with over a ton of it. The total mass of synthetic plastics produced makes the belief in reuse and recycling increasingly hopeless.

Although we are statistically surrounded by more and more objects made of synthetic plastics, they often seem unfamiliar, anonymous and artificial; it seems unimaginable they ever derived from a natural substance. 

Their low price, short utilisation period and the wide variety of appearances that do not allow for a uniform definition are reinforcing this impression. However, a fundamental factor contributing to a recurring sense of alienation is our lack of understanding of its intrinsic form as a material. 

Plastic appears to lack any prior form before its processing, giving the impression that it only emerges as the final product. Due to its adaptability to various shapes with minimal resistance, the material itself becomes nearly invisible, overshadowed by its formal properties such as color and shape. As a result, plastic functions primarily as a medium of form, seemingly disconnected from its production process.⁴

To reconnect the objects around me to the material and places they are made of, I followed the materials upstream, to find the processes that produced them. Where do they take place, what do they look like and what are these anonymous, standardised materials actually made of?⁵

downstream sector 2

The journey starts with a block of expanded polystyrene: so light that it feels inexistent, soft and malleable while hard and brittle at the same time; appearing in square and organic shapes, sometimes perfectly molded to protect a fragile object, or as flat sheets on walls to trap heat.

The active production facilities for synthetic plastics like polystyrene are located about 60 kilometers from Karlsruhe, Germany, in the largest contiguous chemical site in the world, BASF Ludwigshafen. 

Founded in 1865 as Badische Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik, it was temporarily part of I.G. Farbenindustrie AG. In the 1930s, research into polymers began at the site and led, according to BASF, to the development of various plastics, including polystyrene in 1930 and polyethylene in 1937. A significant milestone was the invention of expandable polystyrene (EPS) in 1951, which became best known under the brand name Styropor®.⁶⁷

BASF Ludwigshafen, linked to synthetic plastics not only due to the high production amounts in Germany,⁸ but also through its research efforts and long history, operates at the end of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. 

Crude oil derivatives,⁹ such as naphtha, as well as more refined petrochemical feedstocks like ethylene and propylene, arrive in Ludwigshafen via pipeline, rail, ship, or truck. These feedstocks are used to produce monomers—small, reactive molecules which in many cases do not naturally occur in the forms used for polymer production, and are therefore considered synthetic.

Through polymerisation, monomers are chemically bonded to create long-chain macromolecules called polymers. The resulting polymer is then mixed with additives to achieve the desired properties. At the very end, the final form is achieved through processes such as injection moulding or extrusion.

Strictly forbidden to record videos or photos of the area, I saw the petro-industrial landscape and its giant plastic production halls through a bus window on a special round trip offered by the company.

BASF gets the petrochemical substances to produce plastics from the MiRO refinery in Karlsruhe, among others. The two sites are directly connected by an ethylene and a propylene pipeline,¹⁰ a well-developed road and rail network, as well as the company's own ports at the Rhine.

Mineralölwerke Oberrhein–MiRO, Germany's biggest refinery, also operates in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. Here, crude oil is seperated into molecular groups through distillation and broken down into smaller hydrocarbon compounds by cracking.

It is only a small proportion of oil derivatives that are used to produce plastics. The main stream of crude oil branches out into various other applications such as road construction, pharmaceuticals, the defence industry, lubricants and, in particular, heating and motor fuels. All of these products together form a family of crude oil derivatives, whereby plastics only make up a small part.¹¹

The refinery functions as a control centre for material flows, where imported crude oil is broken down into a wide range of substances. This process is not fixed but can be flexibly adjusted to meet changing demands and requirements. Among these outputs, the chemical feedstocks used in plastic production can be understood as byproducts of fuel manufacturing.

To ensure the economic efficiency of large refineries such as the one in Karlsruhe, the production of plastics plays a crucial role in absorbing and utilising these byproducts. Plastics thus emerged, in part, as a solution to the challenge of processing surplus hydrocarbons in a cost-effective manner. As a result, the market price of synthetic materials is often deliberately kept below that of the natural materials they imitate, strengthening their function as profitable channels for excess petrochemical substances.¹²

After several on-site protests by Die Letzte Generation,¹³ MiRO seems to be extra cautious, not allowing any new visitors. The once naturally meandering river Alb, now a dead straight canal separating the former two refineries that merged in 1996, makes it possible to walk through the center of the giant complex.  

midstream sector

According to their own information, Germany's largest oil refinery is supplied by just one single pipeline, the Transalpine Pipeline, or TAL for short.It ends in Karlsruhe, running underground all the way to Ingolstadt, from where it passes east of Munich, crosses the Alps and passes through Austria to Italy, east of Udine to the port of Trieste. There it is connected to a tank farm and the marine terminal where oil tankers arrive via the Mediterranean Sea. 

Petroleum flows continuously through a sealed system, with the pipeline itself remaining largely invisible. Constructed in the late 1960s, it was laid at a depth of up to five meters beneath the earth's surface.

Its presence can only be seen indirectly, marked by signs and ventilation tubes placed at regular intervals along the pipeline. A 10-meter protection zone—5 meters on each side—extends along its entire length, where no buildings or deep-rooted vegetation are permitted. This restriction creates a noticeable, continuous swathe across the landscape. 

upstream sector 2

A very small portion of petroleum arrives at MiRO in Karlsruhe without going through the TAL pipeline. It is not mentioned in most statistics, but some petroleum comes from the oil fields in the Palatinate near Landau, transported by road tankers.¹⁴

Despite being the most productive oil field in southern Germany, the fields next to Landau covered only 0.7% of Germany’s oil needs in 2006.¹⁵ In 2024, there are still 33 horsehead pumps extracting a mixture of mostly water and 10% oil from around 1,200 meters depth.¹⁶ 

upstream sector 1

It is possible that the city of Karlsruhe itself is built on deposits of crude oil. 

The most significant oil-bearing rock formations in the Upper Rhine Graben are the Pechelbronner Schichten, from which oil is already being extracted.¹⁷ These layers extend through the entire Upper Rhine Graben, which suggests that they could also be present beneath Karlsruhe.¹⁸ 

The municipality of Weingarten, a district of Karlsruhe, is the only place in Baden-Württemberg where oil is being explored. The company RheinPetroleum has been drilling for oil next to a swimming lake since 2019 and discovered a promising oil deposit at a depth of around 2,150 meters, which could potentially lead to commercial crude oil production in the region. However, the production of an estimated 30,000 litres per day is unlikely in the near future, as the company filed for bankruptcy in August 2024. The site of drilling Steg1 subsequently was closed off over a large area and the borehole was sealed.¹⁹

upstream sector 0

The Pechelbronner Schichten is named after the municipality of Pechelbronn in Alsace, France, located about 50 kilometers from Karlsruhe. The name Pechelbronn comes from the words pechel (pitch) and bronn (well) and played a key role in European oil history. Oil was first documented there in 1498, with commercial production starting in 1735, long before any drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The production peaked in the early 20th century but ceased in 1962, when pipelines, like the TAL to Karlsruhe, made oil imports cheaper.²⁰²¹

Today, not much remains of the petro-industrial past of Pechelbronn except for the small French Petroleum Museum, a few monuments and a large, undeveloped area near the center where once stood a refinery. Since oil has not been extracted in this region in industrial quantities for over 60 years, it rises through cracks in the rock layers and seeps to the surface in natural oil springs in the forest. 

When I was visiting the forest for a second time I noticed a strange smell. It smelled similar to when I was at MiRO in the wind between the refinery towers—similar to the distinct smell of a petrol station. I followed a narrow path towards it until I saw a large, round puddle in a small clearing. The ground and the trees around it were colored black.

As I got closer, I could see that the puddle had a black-silver shine to it and consisted of lots of bubbles, creating an uneven surface. Every now and then, a new air bubble rose, shimmered briefly in blue-purple tones, like a soap bubble, and burst. When I lifted a stick whose tip was in the puddle, I found that the black, shiny liquid had a thick, syrupy consistency. The lines I drew across the surface slowly merged again, and it took some time before the sluggish movement slowed down so much that I could no longer see it.

From the puddle, tracks led into the surrounding forest. On the flattened grasses and plants, I saw fresh, shiny traces of the liquid. They led to trees, which were dark, matt black or partly still shiny up to half a meter above ground. Later I learned that wild boars like to bathe in the oil springs and then rub against trees, which helps to protect their skin from mosquitoes.²²

As I laid the stick back to the ground, a little liquid ran over my fingertips. While the spots appeared dark black at first, they shimmered and shone when the light fell through the clearing from the right angle. I could hardly believe that there was a puddle in the middle of the forest that smelled of gasoline and petrochemical plants. At this place, oil naturally rises to the earth's surface.

Only there, I really understood that petroleum is not an isolated substance, cut off from its surroundings, but part of an ecosystem. It is a naturally occurring substance, integrated into natural processes, not a closed ‘deposit’ so deep underground that it would never be seen without human intervention.

As a result of the thousands of kilometres transported—to the surface and then sometimes halfway around the world, this material travels long distances from its origin and its embeddedness in the environment.

But what probably makes an even greater difference is the various separations, sorting and processing steps that it undergoes along the way. Since it is broken down into small monomers, reformed and then combined with others, it is difficult to speak of any kind of originality.

And although synthetic plastics have been geographically and physically so far removed from the natural product they derive from, some material properties seem to prevail. For example, the non-degradability of plastics might not be human-created, rather, it seems to be an inherent quality of petroleum that is now present in a new form. 

Another property that also survives the transport and transformation processes is the tendency towards viscosity. Even though many plastics make a hard and firm first impression, over time, under pressure, heat or contact with solvents, they become malleable and viscous again. In this state, they appear sticky and often spread, uncontrollable and reluctant; think of the sticky plastic of an old car door or the handle of an old kitchen knife. It is as if industrially produced plastic only fulfils the desired properties for a certain period of time, and then the suppressed properties of crude oil gradually reassert themselves.

What begins as a shimmering liquid in a forest, ends up as an ubiquitous, everyday object—stripped of memory, place, and origin, yet still faintly echoing those through its material properties. This work reconstructs that journey to not only reveal what plastic is, but to question what it means that we no longer ask about the process and path it takes to become the product we hold in our hands daily. It forms part of my diploma project, supervised by Füsun Türetken and Susanne Kriemann in 2024.

Footnotes

1. Anne Pinto-Rodrigues, “Microplastics are in our bodies. Here’s why we don’t know the health risks,” Science News (posted 24.03.2023), online https://www.sciencenews.org/article/microplastics-human-bodies-health-risks, accessed September 10, 2024. ↑

2. Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska and Max Roser, “Plastic Pollution,” Our World in Data (posted 2023), online https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution, accessed August 19, 2024. ↑

3. Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, “Global plastic production with projections,” Our World in Data, (posted 2023), online https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastic-production-projections accessed August 19, 2024. ↑

4. Johannes Lang, Prozessästhetik. Weimar: Birkhäuser, 2015, p.59. ↑

5. Employing a reverse chronological narrative structure, Alain Resnais’ film Le Chant du Styrène served as an important source of inspiration for this project. See: Cplurs,  “Le Chant du Styrène,” (video), YouTube, (1958, uploaded 2020), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1hZyQUF6Y. ↑

6. BASF, “70 Years of Styropor®: From Life-Saver to Thermal Insulation,” Styropor Portal (posted n.d.), online https://styropor.com/portal/basf/de/dt.jsp?setCursor=1_1227353&seite=70-years-eps-by-basf, accessed August 13, 2024. ↑

7.  The absurd diversity and versatile material properties of expanded polystyrene are showcased in the commercial film Schaumgeboren by BASF from 1963 . See: BASF, “Schaumgeboren,” (video), YouTube, (1963, uploaded 2020),https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPOz3PgeUuw. ↑

8. WorldAtlas, “The World's Largest Chemical Companies,” WorldAtlas (posted April 25, 2017), online https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-are-the-world-s-largest-chemical-producing-companies.html, accessed August 11, 2024. ↑

9. Products that come from separating and processing crude oil in a refinery. ↑

10. Germany Trade & Invest, “Chemical Parks in Germany,” Germany Trade & Invest (posted n.d.), online https://www.gtai.de/resource/blob/64506/10f87329287858d6eeea04aa339d34c5/fact-sheet-chemical-parks-en-data.pdf, accessed August 8, 2024. ↑

11. PlasticsEurope, “Plastics – the Facts 2017: An Analysis of European Plastics Production, Demand and Waste Data,” PlasticsEurope (posted 2018), online https://plasticseurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2017-Plastics-the-facts.pdf, accessed September 11, 2024. ↑

12. Reinhard Schu, Jens Niestroj, Kirsten Schu, “Einsatz von Kunststoffen,” EcoEnergy (posted n.d.), online https://www.ecoenergy.de/go_public/freigegeben/Manuskript_Einsatz%20von%20Kunststoffen_R.Schu_ger.pdf, accessed April 7, 2025. ↑

13. Die Letzte Generation is a climate activist group founded in Germany, known primarily for direct actions protesting the governments’ failure to act on the climate crisis. It shares goals and tactics with Extinction Rebellion. ↑

14. Chemie Technik, “Wintershall Celebrates 60 Years of Oil Production in Landau,” Chemie Technik (posted n.d.), online https://www.chemietechnik.de/markt/wintershall-feiert-60-jahre-erdoelfoerderung-in-landau.html, accessed September 28, 2024. ↑

15. Gustav Albiez, “Erdöl am Oberrhein,” Berichte der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Freiburg i. Br. 34, (1934), online https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Berichte-naturf-Ges-Freiburg-Br_34_0245-0358.pdf, accessed September 28, 2024. ↑

16. Landau-Nußdorf.de, “Oil Extraction in Nußdorf,” Landau-Nußdorf.de (posted n.d.), online https://www.landau-nussdorf.de/mains/rundgang/oel.htm, accessed April 7, 2025. ↑

17. Markus Sachse, “Zur oligozänen Rupeltransgression im nördlichen Oberrheingraben im Bereich des Erdölfeldes Eich/Königsgarten – eine Palynofazies-Studie,” Jahrbuch des Vereins für Naturkunde in Württemberg, Neue Folge 89 (2007): 77–104, online https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273448370_Zur_oligozanen_Rupeltransgression_im_nordlichen_Oberrheingraben_im_Bereich_des_Erdolfeldes_EichKonigsgarten_-_eine_Palynofazies-Studie, accessed April 7, 2025. ↑

18. Gustav Albiez, “Petroleum in the Upper Rhine Valley.” ↑

19. Rhein Petroleum, “Fließt bald das "schwarze Gold"? Öl-Bohrung in Weingarten war erfolgreich”, KA-News (posted July 8, 2019), online https://www.ka-news.de/region/bruchsal/fliesst-bald-das-schwarze-gold-oel-bohrung-in-weingarten-war-erfolgreich-art-2400736, accessed April 7, 2025. ↑

20. Gustav Albiez, “Petroleum in the Upper Rhine Valley.” ↑

21. Markus Sachse, “Zur oligozänen Rupeltransgression im nördlichen Oberrheingraben im Bereich des Erdölfeldes Eich/Königsgarten – eine Palynofazies-Studie.” ↑

22. Michael Hauck, “Ein geologischer und industriehistorischer Exkursionsführer: Raum Merkwiller-Pechelbronn,” Berichte der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Freiburg im Breisgau 113 (2023): 111–146, online https://www.zobodat.at/pdf/Berichte-naturf-Ges-Freiburg-Br_113_0111-0146.pdf, accessed April 7, 2025. ↑