This symposium, supported by the Victoria and Albert Museum, was held to celebrate and disseminate the findings of the EU funded project, Preservation of Plastic ARTefacts (PopART). It brought together academics, artists, designers, manufacturers, conservators and curators to discuss the impact of plastics on art and design and their future potential in our lives. A thread running through the papers and discussion was eco design and sustainable use of plastics. Dr Brenda Keneghan is the Polymer Scientist at the V&A and represents the Royal Society of Chemistry on the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences working group on Chemistry for Cultural Heritage. She edited the book Plastics, Looking at the Future and Learning from the Past, Archetype Books, 2008. She talked about the POPART project under the title PopArt – the first EU-funded project addressing the problem of plastic objects in heritage collections.