Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Our Plastic Inheritance

Trisia Farrelly, Sy Taffel, and Ian Shaw

PART I POLLUTION

1. Marine Litter: Are There Solutions to This Global Environmental Problem?

Imogen E. Napper, Sabine Pahl, and Richard C. Thompson

2. Slow Violence: The Erosion of Marine Plastic Debris and of Human Health

Sasha Adkins

3. How Seabirds and Indigenous Science Illustrate the Legacies of Plastics Pollution

Stephanie B. Borrelle, Jennifer Provencher, and Tina Ngata

4. Dawn of the Plastisphere: An Experiment with Unpredictable Effects

Sven Bergmann

PART II PERSISTENCE

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

Christina Gerhardt

6. Dressed in Plastic: The Persistence of Polyester Clothes

Elyse Stanes

7 Caring for the Multiple Cares of Plastics

Tridibesh Dey and Mike Michael

8. On Becoming a Massively Distributed Thing: Hedgehogs, Plastics, and the Bearable Lightness of Becoming

Laura McLauchlan

PART III POLITICS

9. Communicative Capitalism, Technological Solutionism, and The Ocean Cleanup

Sy Taffel

10. Toward Large-Scale Social Change and Plastic Politics: An Anthropological Perspective on the Practices of a Danish Environmental Organization

Johanne Tarpgaard

11. Plastics Talk/Talking Plastics: The Communicative Power of Plasticity

Deirdre McKay, Padmapani Perez, and Lei Xiaoyu

12. Redressing the Faustian Bargains of Plastics Economies

Trisia Farrelly, Ian Shaw, and John Holland

Conclusion: Where There’s a Will … Contesting Our Plastic Inheritance

Trisia Farrelly

List of Contributors