This thesis tackles the issue of world's overload with plastic waste. My approach to the issue is interdisciplinary. First, I present plastic as a material and explain why it can be problematic. After that I critically assess recycling as a technological solution for the current plastic crisis. I show the inefficiency of recycling. the lack of actual execution and demonstrate the true faith of plastic waste – trading, burning and landfilling. Next, I try to explain why individuals still understand recycling as an adequate way to deal with our current waste situation. I discover that we actively participate in recycling not just because we believe in its efficiency, but because of it’s moral(istic) implications. I explain that corporations had a significant role in establishing recycling as we know it today. Recycling is in their best interest, because it establishes a misleading notion that our waste, after being discarded, is used again and so legitimizes the introduction of single use products that allow for ever greater expansion of industrial production. Corporations don’t do this out of their greed, but because they are forced in such actions by capitalism’s growth imperative. Waste problem is then the necessary consequence of capitalist production system, which means that we can only find an appropriate alternative within another economic order.
|
