101 Uses for a Dead Credit Card Number 7: Donate to British Museum

Instead of taking the scissors to your old credit card, why not donate your unwanted plastic to the British Museum for careful curating? They may be just a bit of old rubbish to you and me, but ephemera such as plastic cards are of social and historical interest, and museums are increasingly having to worry about how best to save them for posterity.

Clare Ward and Joanne Dyer, experts from the Department of Conservation and Science at the British Museum, explain:-.

'Most plastics deteriorate by reaction with oxygen - often in processes initiated by light and heat. The most unstable plastics are some of the early forms like cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate, as well as polyvinylchloride (PVC) and polyurethane (often present as foam). Plastics such as cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate deteriorate evolving acidic gases which can be damaging to the objects themselves and also other objects in the vicinity.
As they degrade surfaces start to craze and any associated metal components may start to corrode. PVC deteriorates by loss of plasticiser which is identifiable as a sticky layer on the surface of the plastic while polyurethane foam becomes brittle and crumbles.'

Crumbs, and I thought that taking care of the Elgin Marbles was difficult...

Here's a link back to the '101 Objects' website, one of my personal favourites for more on this.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/npZ_CaB-T4CbBfJ7qRs17w