The sunlight streams in through the plastic blinds. For a while, I continue to lie down with my head resting on the pillow filled with plastic stuffing. I check my plastic clock then jump out of the bed. I open the plastic door of the refrigerator, take out a plastic water bottle, and drink some water. I sit on the plastic toilet holding my plastic toothbrush, attempting to get two things done simultaneously. The toothbrush goes into the plastic sterilizer, and the used toilet paper goes into the plastic trash bin. I put on plastic clothes over my plastic underwear. I pack stir-fried rice lunch in a plastic lunchbox, and just in case the soup leaks, I put the plastic lunchbox in a plastic bag. I place the plastic bag in a bag made of plastic material, grab my smartphone that wears a plastic case, put in my plastic earphones, and grab my plastic credit cards.

- Excerpt from ‘Let’s Joke About Science’

It's the age of plastic. From the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to sleep, we live within the realm of plastic. Just as we don't consciously notice the telephone poles standing along the road, plastic has become such an everyday part of our lives that we often don't notice it.

Plastic is easier to produce than any other material. It's long-lasting and can even find its way into our bodies. When plastic was commercialized in the 1970s, it was hailed as the “miracle material” precisely because of this convenience. However, over 50 years later, these remarkable benefits of plastic have become the starting point of our impending doom. Its convenience has led to its overuse and its permanence is causing the Earth to decay.

With so many people talking about the seriousness of plastic pollution, I decided to look up some data from Greenpeace, and I found that the average disposable plastic consumption per person in South Korea is 568 items per year, which means that a staggering 5,600,000,000 items are discarded each year in South Korea alone. In South Korea, the number of 500 ml plastic water bottles used annually can wrap around the Earth 14 times, and the combined height of the plastic cups used annually is 1.5 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. The fact that all of this happens within just one year is truly shocking. Seeing these mind-boggling numbers, I thought, “Oh, that's really astonishing. Scientists must be very busy.” Yes, even as someone who is a part of this plastic world, that's just about as serious as my reaction gets after seeing these numbers: “Science will solve everything.”

Obviously though, scientists cannot solve everything. I mean, just look at the plastic-frame glasses of scientists who are trying to alert us about the dangers of plastic. In the 21st century, no one on Earth can be the “No Plastic Man.” Fortunately, however, everyone can be aware of the dangers of plastic. Lucky for us, there are people who are smart and quick-on-their-feet all around the world. My job? Well, it's to support their efforts and be a free rider.

In the world we live in now, there is a name tag we use to distinguish good brands: ESG. The first acronym E, which stands for ‘Environmental,’ is seen as a global challenge that transcends national borders. It involves providing reusable straws instead of plastic ones, displaying label-less bottled water, and developing paper ice packs. Companies have adopted various measures to reduce plastic, but to be honest, I find some of these efforts still unrelatable. If using a product makes you feel more inconvenient or less ‘cool’ than before, then it's not a good product experience. It was amidst this dilemma that I came across the rebranded Sulwhasoo.