Cultural significance of plastic waste

How important is plastic in our society?
Plastics help us protect the environment by reducing waste, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and saving energy at home, at work, and on the road..
What is the culture of plastic?
Plasticulture is the practice of using plastic materials in agricultural applications.
The plastic materials themselves are often and broadly referred to as "ag plastics"..
What is the significance of plastic waste?
Plastic pollution can alter habitats and natural processes, reducing ecosystems' ability to adapt to climate change, directly affecting millions of people's livelihoods, food production capabilities and social well-being.
UNEP's body of work demonstrates that the problem of plastic pollution doesn't exist in a vacuum..
Why is plastic important to society?
Plastics are in products we use every day that help keep us safe.
They are in bicycle helmets, child safety seats, and automotive airbags that protect us and the cell phones that connect us.
Plastics also help keep the foods we eat and serve to our families safer and fresher than ever before..
Our throwaway culture drives the triple planetary crisis we face today.
Not just the crisis of pollution and waste, but the crisis of climate change and the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss.
What we produce too often ends up dumped in landfills or in the environment – directly or through leakage and burning.

Findings showed that, like people, plastics also have a 'social life.' Items like plastic bags have become more than just a way to carry groceries. Plastics

Plastics items, like branded clothing, become symbols that say something about who we are. But exactly what our plastics use says about us is constantly

What Is The Culture Around Plastics in Japan?

The idea of not getting a free plastic bag when shopping is a problem

Yes, There Were Similarities with Uruguay

In Uruguay, small plastic bottled water was refilled and re-used with tap water. Bigger 5-litre bottles were re-purposed as plant pots

Cambridge Has It Easy Compared to Cape Town

In the UK plastics are recycled as part of weekly collections. In South Africa, most people are provided with one wheelie bin for all their rubbish

What If You Don’T Have A Car?

Most people do not have a car or have recycling collected from their home, so a lot of plastic ends up in landfills

Can I See What 80kg of Plastic Looks like?

Yes! Watch a team of volunteers crushing and sorting plastic bottles on Mandela Day in Cape Town

Still Interested?

Research into Japan and the World is part of ongoing research happening hereat Cambridge

How does plastic contribute to a more sustainable society?

It also contributes in different ways to the construction of a more sustainable society: plastics protect food and help reduce food waste, enable the design of lighter vehicles, and insulate electrical cables for maximum efficiency

But balancing all of plastic's valuable uses are the problems it creates

How has the plastic ban impacted the world?

The immediate effect of the ban was a collapse in the price of waste plastics, leading to increasing rates of incineration and landfilling (OECD, 2018 )

While this has brought urgency to CE initiatives in the West, it has also increased the challenges of making the collection, sorting, and recycling of plastic waste economically feasible

Is plastic a waste or a pollution?

Our consideration of plastic flows reveals increasing politicization towards the latter end of the life cycle, that is, plastic as waste and pollution

Turning to plastic objects, we observe different forms of mobilization, and varying connections between flows and objects, which allow for multiple interpretations of what is at stake