5 Plastiglomerate Plastics, Geology, and the New Materialism of the Anthropocene

Christina Gerhardt

On April 24, 2018, a study carried out by the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research stated that the levels of plastics¹ in sea ice from the Arctic Ocean were higher than ever measured previously (Peeken et al. 2018).² The plastics had travelled there from regions as far away as the Pacific Ocean at the other end of the globe. Furthermore, the different types of plastics showed a unique footprint in the ice, allowing the researchers to trace them back to possible sources. These sources included the massive garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean. In 2017, research led by Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University found plastics in microscopic species in the deepest reaches of the ocean (Newcastle University 2017). In 2017, another study discovered that 83 percent of water sampled from a dozen nations was contaminated by plastic fibres (Tyree and Morrison 2017). Taken together, this research illustrates that plastics contamination can be defined in a number of ways: be it by geographic range, by species range, and scale of contamination.

Additionally, plastics have deep temporal ranges and thus relate to the Anthropocene. Proponents describe the Anthropocene as a new geological era distinct from the previous epoch, the Holocene, because of the traces that it leaves in the geological record of human (anthropo-)action. The term “Anthropocene” is widely attributed to freshwater researcher Eugene F. Stoermer. Stoermer coined the term in the 1980s but did not formalize its use until contacted by Nobel Prize–winning atmospheric scientist and chemist Paul J. Crutzen (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). Environmental journalist Andrew Revkin used the variant “Anthrocene” in his 1992 book Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. In 2008, lead scientist Jan Zalasiewicz, in a co-authored report published in GSA Today, asked “Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene?” and explored the scientific basis for use of the term.

Not all humans, as suggested in the introduction to this volume, contribute equally to climate change. The disproportionate wealth between the Global North and the Global South or the economic inequality within a nation plays a vital role. These disparities call for a careful consideration of the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on ethnicity, gender, and class when attributing responsibility for the drivers of climate change and plastics pollution and their unevenly felt impacts (see Malm and Hornborg 2014). To capture these variations, scholars have put forward different terms: Donna Haraway (2016) has proposed “Chthulucene;” and Jason Moore (2015) put forward “Capitalocene.” The Holocene, the period preceding the current era, lasted for a staggering 11,700 years, providing Earth with a relatively stable environment. For the term “Anthropocene” to be accepted, a geological marker is needed. Plastics have been a commonly accepted marker.

Plastiglomerate is a “stone” that consists of plastics and organic debris such as sand, wood, or lava fragments. Oceanographer Charles J. Moore, better known for having discovered the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in 1997, first discovered these geological formations when he visited Kamilo Beach on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2006. In 2012, geologist Patricia Corcoran brought Moore to Western University in Ontario to give a guest lecture about plastics pollution. On one of his slides, Moore featured a stone that he had found on Kamilo Beach, without yet having developed a name for it. The stones piqued the curiosity of Corcoran, keen to investigate the site and stones. Kelly Jazvac, an artist who also teaches at Western University and had worked with the plastic material vinyl, also known as polyvinylchloride (PVC) (Lossin 2012), attended the talk and spoke to Corcoran afterward. Jazvac expressed interest in collaborating if Corcoran pursued the topic of oceans and plastics further (Valentine 2015). In 2013, Corcoran and Jazvac headed to Hawaii on a research trip and sampled twenty-one sites on Kamilo Beach (Valentine 2015). They gathered rocks on the surface of the beach or buried in the sand or nearby vegetation. Later that year Moore, Corcoran, and Jazvac proposed plastiglomerate as the geological marker of the Anthropocene (Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac 2013) and relatedly climate change.

Plastics are petroleum-derived substances. In the United States, petroleum use is a key driver of climate change because of its high levels of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). After the production of electricity generation through burning fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, petroleum use for transportation is the second largest emitter of GHGs. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2019a), in the United States 29 percent of GHGs are produced by transportation and 28 percent by electricity. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that more than 90 percent of transportation fuels produced globally are petroleum based (as cited in Environmental Protection Agency 2019b). Plastics call attention to the scale of the petroleum industry. They are present in a range of products that move globally but manifest locally. Plastics will long remain as one of the markers of the petroleum age.

In what follows, I discuss plastiglomerate, an interdisciplinary, ecocritical, or environmental humanities project that focuses on plastics in the Pacific Ocean. Plastiglomerate draws on and bridges the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, reflecting how an interdisciplinary approach can help to address climate change and the Anthropocene. As Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac (2013, 1) put it, plastiglomerate reveals how the “imminent dangers [that plastics] pose to marine organisms and their ecosystems” manifest geologically.

Plastiglomerate shows how plastics appear in locations thousands of kilometres away from the sources of their extraction, production, consumption, and managed disposal—thus highlighting their spatial ranges. Additionally, plastiglomerate “indicate[s] that this anthropogenically influenced material has great potential to form a marker horizon of human pollution, signaling the occurrence of the informal Anthropocene epoch” (Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac 2013, 4), thus marking its temporal range. Plastiglomerate reveals both the spatial and the temporal stakes of plastics pollution.

Towards the end of this chapter, I discuss how this interdisciplinary project, focused on oceanography but also engaged in the arts, grapples with spatial and temporal scales. I consider, too, various solutions, global and local in scale, to the problems that Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac (2013) put forward and the limitations of these solutions. Plastics in the Pacific Ocean also raise larger questions about historical and contemporary responsibilities. Finally, I consider some possible actions and solutions, highlighting broader theoretical ramifications that relate specifically to the deep-time implications of plastics as evidenced by the discovery of plastiglomerate.

Moore discovered the first Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the northeast Pacific Ocean in 1997 and mentioned it to oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who called it the “Eastern Garbage Patch” (Moore 2003). The 2010 Ocean Conservancy report, Trash Travels, estimates that 60 percent of the garbage in the Earth’s oceans consists of disposable items. Some estimate that as much as 80–90 percent of the garbage in the oceans consists of plastics. Regardless of the exact percentage, most of the marine litter found in the oceans is made of plastics. Natural plastics do not entirely degrade. Instead, when the sun hits them, they gradually break down into smaller and smaller pieces through a process known as photodegradation. As plastics photodegrade, toxic chemicals are released into the ocean (American Chemical Society 2009). Sea creatures from molluscs, plankton, and others lower on the food chain to fish, sea turtles, and monk seal further up the food chain then ingest the plastics. In this way, toxins slowly travel up the food chain.

Contrary to popular opinion, the majority of what constitutes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch does not float visibly on the ocean’s surface (Hoarde 2009). “The actual scenario is even more insidious,” says photographer Chris Jordan, who has documented the impacts of plastics on albatross. “The plastic is all underwater, suspended invisibly below the surface, and breaking apart into smaller and smaller pieces. Much of it has already broken down into tiny fragments about the same size as plankton, being ingested by the hundreds of billions into the small fish that are the bottom of the food chain for all marine life” (cited in Hoarde 2009, para. 3). According to the Ocean Conservancy, the top ten items found in oceans worldwide by count include (from most common to least common) (1) cigarettes; (2) food wrappers; (3) plastic beverage bottles; (4) plastic bags; (5) plastic caps and lids; (6) plastic cups, plates, forks, knives, and spoons; (7) plastic straws and stir sticks; (8) glass beverage bottles; (9) beverage cans; and (10) paper bags (2010, 13). Petroleum-derived plastics constitute the majority of the items listed.

It is stunning to consider, however, the invisible end of plastics in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is known for what is visible, measuring 1.6 million square kilometres (617,000 square miles) or twice the size of France (Lebreton et al. 2018). It is understood as something that can be photographed from the air by satellites and planes and from the surface of the water by cruise and cargo ships as well as boats. It can be seen in the remains of albatrosses, which deftly negotiate the region between air and water, skimming the surface. However, despite this visibility, it is what is less visible and remains undocumented that daunts us. In terms of terrain, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch includes the vast expanse below the surface line in which the plastics linger. Plastics photodegrade into increasingly smaller particulate matter, making them harder to track. To assess the scale of plastics pollution, then, suggests a consideration not only of the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch but also of the discovery of a garbage patch in both the northeast and the northwest Pacific Ocean and a patch in the South Pacific Ocean close to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).³ In addition, it suggests a consideration of what is not visible below the surface, what is not visible any longer because it has disintegrated into particulate matter invisible to the human eye, and plastic fragments and plastic-related toxins ingested by marine wildlife. Then there is the distance that all plastics travel from either Asia or North America. It is estimated that most of the plastics in the Pacific Ocean derive not from ships or boats but from Asia and North America. It takes plastics about a year to travel from Asia’s East Coast and about six years from North America’s West Coast to the northwest Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Art can help to visualize plastics in the ocean, but it also raises questions about how to image (or imagine or address) what is not visible to the human eye. This issue of visibility has implications not only for the petroleum industry’s plastics but also for the petroleum industry–generated greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It also raises questions about how to imagine an issue of such vast scales, in terms of the size, both horizontally and vertically, of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch(es) and in terms of the numbers of deaths of marine sea creatures, seabirds, plants, and other forms of life affected by the plastics. Thom van Dooren (2014, 22), in his study of albatrosses in the Pacific Ocean, raises questions about a vast temporal scale: “The plastics and other toxic compounds circulating in [the] world’s oceans … threaten not only the lives of individual birds but the future of their species, too.”

In 2013, the interdisciplinary team led by Corcoran and Jazvac conducted research on plastics on Kamilo Beach. As they explored the stones on the beach, they discovered that most of them consisted of a combination of plastics and organic materials, such as sand, wood, coral, and lava rock. This plastiglomerate, they argue, leaves a geological trace of our modern era, the Anthropocene. The geographic scope of their discovery is vast: plastiglomerate tracks the manifestation of the global use of plastics in a specific location. Additionally, the temporal scale of their research—taking note of a geological trace that plastics will leave on the historical record—is immense. It is a stark indicator of plastics’ deep-time implications. Scientific organizations such as the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences are using the term “plastiglomerate,” as Jazvac outlined in an interview, as evidence that we have entered a new geological period, the Anthropocene (Valentine 2015). Plastiglomerate has the potential to be one of the most powerful images today and a valuable visual tool with which to facilitate policy and behavioural change to respond to global and local plastics pollution.

The work of Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac (2013) brings what is far away for some nearby and makes it visible. The stones that they discovered often were buried in sand or intermingled with nearby vegetation and underbrush. Yet plastiglomerate is plastic that has been mingled with natural material and thus might not break down well and instead be preserved. Temporally, it documents plastics in our present geological era. Plastiglomerate has its origins in organisms long since extinct and its traces will persist long into the future. Plastiglomerate offers a powerful visual tool capable of raising appreciation of the deep-time impacts of plastics production, consumption, and disposal than any other known artifact.

Since his discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997, Moore has organized over fifteen ocean trips. He has also personally made ten voyages between Hawaii and California, gathering plastics along the way and documenting the changes in quantity and content. His 1998 trip and 1999 study revealed that plastics outnumbered plankton by six to one (Moore et al. 2002). His 2002 trip and 2003 study conducted along the same route revealed that plastics outweighed zooplankton by a factor of five to two (Moore 2003). Moore founded Algalita, a non-profit organization, in 2005. Algalita is devoted to eliminating plastics pollution in the oceans, and its researchers have published annual reports on the plastics that they have gathered from the ocean. Moore and his team carry out these investigations in the Pacific Ocean not only on the shores of his home state of California but also on the shores of the starting point of his ocean trips, Hawaii.

What brings the plastics to this southeastern tip of Hawaii Island, where Moore discovered them, is a great oceanic current or gyre. Globally, there are five major oceanic gyres, which include the North Pacific Gyre and the South Pacific Gyre. The North Pacific Gyre moves in a clockwise direction from the shores just east of Asia across the ocean. It heads east, turns south far off the shores of North America, and then gradually circles back west again toward Asia. The path of the North Pacific Gyre thus encircles the broad stretch of ocean from Midway Atoll in the northeast to the southeastern tip of Hawaii Island.

The plastics that wash up on Kamilo Beach by way of this gyre meld with natural materials found on the shore, such as sand, lava rock, and wood. The dense matter that results makes the rock heavy and unlikely to be transported by wind or water. It also means that the rocks are likely to be buried and thus preserved. Plastiglomerate can be considered a marker of the Anthropocene because plastics are an “anthropogenically derived material” (Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac 2013, 4) and because “the fragments were formed anthropogenically,” in this case “by burning plastic debris in an open environment” (6). That is, the plastics were burned on Kamilo Beach in barbecues or campfires. When the plastics melt, they meld with the natural materials around them. The subsequent entanglement is plastiglomerate. In their research, Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac found the plastiglomerate to be “buried by sand and organic debris, as well as having been trapped by vegetation, which demonstrates the potential for preservation in the future rock record” (6). They also cite the possibility of finding “similar deposits where lava flows, forest fires and extreme temperatures occur” (7).

To the wide geographic scale that is the Pacific Ocean, its North Pacific Gyre, and the plastics found there, the study by Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac (2013) adds a long temporal scale since they present plastiglomerate as the first “stone” to mark the Anthropocene in geological terms. How, then, do we address the deep-time and broad geographical scales of the plastics carried in the Pacific Ocean?

After returning from his tenth and most recent trip to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Moore (2014, A23) stated that “no scientist, environmentalist, entrepreneur, national or international government agency has yet been able to establish a comprehensive way of recycling the plastic trash that covers our land and inevitably blows and washes down to the sea.” He also indicated that the effects of plastics, in terms of pollution in the environment and among marine wildlife and humans, are only now revealing themselves. Although environmental groups organize beach cleanups, they “will never be able,” he argues, “to clean up remote garbage gyres.” The Ocean Cleanup, for example, claimed to offer a solution to the global plastics crisis by removing plastics from vast oceanic areas, yet this proved to be a failed example of “techno-solutioneering.”⁴

The only solution, Moore (2014, A23) concludes, is to prevent plastics “from getting into the ocean in the first place.” Thus, the solution, like the problem, must be global. Moreover, the solution must be focused on prevention at source. Moore’s solution shares the environmental justice movement’s ethos of “Leave It in the Ground” (LINGO) in regard to fossil fuels. Failing LINGO, our next best option might be to prevent the production of the aforementioned list of plastics mostly commonly found in the ocean by the Ocean Conservancy: Cigarettes, food wrappers, plastic beverage bottles, and plastic bags. The “cigarettes” are actually shorthand for the cigarette filters, the only part that does not biodegrade. If they are not banned through legislation, then the next best option (at least in terms of environmental protection) might be to ban plastic-based filters. Food wrappers could be replaced with biodegradable food packaging, and plastic beverage bottles could be replaced with fully recyclable glass bottles alongside a container deposit scheme and the provision of refill options in stores and public areas.

Finally, to date no nation-wide ban on plastic bags exists in the United States. California has a ban on single-use plastic bags that went into effect in November 2016. In Hawaii, all counties have a ban on single-use plastic bags. Although these bans do not constitute a state-level legislated ban, it is de facto a state-wide ban that went into effect on July 1, 2015. The ban in Hawaii was phased in first on Kauai and Maui in 2011, on the Big Island in 2013, and then in Honolulu in 2015 (National Conference of State Legislatures 2019). With the passage of Senate Bill 1508 in 2019, New York became the third state to ban plastic bags. As of August 1, 2019, Connecticut has placed a fee on single use bags. Twenty US states are considering banning plastic bags, and the American territories of American Samoa and Puerto Rico have banned them.

Plastic products are linked to a wide range of externalities.⁵ It is often forgotten that plastic bags are typically derived from petroleum.⁶ One could thus question whether the cost of single-use plastic production is worth the cost of the ever-increasing contortions of the oil industry. They include increased prospecting and extraction and the human rights abuses and conflicts that they have perpetuated. As the oil industry is under increasing pressure due to the shift to renewable energy and the phase-out of fossil fuel-powered vehicles, it might well shift is focus to plastics. The full cost must also include the additional fossil fuels used in the transportation of plastic products around the globe, further contributing to climate change.⁷

The true cost of plastics could be included in, and measured by, corporate accounting systems to internalize the negative externalities of plastics production. This approach would transfer the costs of negative externalities back to producers and consumers and relieve the state and municipalities of these financial burdens. Doing either would lead to a dramatic shift in the market and a dramatic reduction in plastics production and consumption. Paying for a plastic bag, for example—as is the current system in places as different and geographically distant as California and Germany—is an economic instrument commonly used to curb plastic bag use,⁸ but it does not even begin to address the environmental and health costs associated with them. One could also consider the “twelve leverage points” indicating where to intervene in the plastics industry or the broader economic system when it is fixated on growth (see Meadows 2008, 145–65). Thus, an array of options exists to reassess the detrimental impacts of plastics: (1) to ask whether an economic system fixated on growth is desirable; (2) to address the costs typically externalized, such as environmental and health effects; (3) to shift these typically externalized costs back onto the producers; and (4) to shift the costs typically externalized onto consumers.

The real cost of plastics raises questions about the extent to which industrialized countries, in particular the United States, have built their economies on the backs of petrochemical and plastics industries (UNEP 2014). Considering the true cost of plastics would also invite scrutiny of how and why federal agencies responsible for effective environmental regulation have been defanged, co-opted, and gutted. For example, after Donald Trump took office, entire pages of the Environmental Protection Agency website were deleted or edited (see Zoë Schlanger 2017).

The issue of plastics in the Pacific Ocean and the related project discussed here—Corcoran, Moore, and Jazvac’s (2013) plastiglomerate—raise fundamental questions about spatial and temporal scales. The solutions to the problems of plastics are equally vast. Spatially, are the solutions local, national, or global? Or some combination? Economically and ecologically, are they at the sites of production or consumption? Finally, if plastiglomerate is a marker of the Anthropocene, then the global community needs a solution that radically recasts the current global economic system in such a way that prevents plastics pollution and ensures environmental justice.