Abstract

This dissertation takes a multi-scalar approach to exploring the environmental and human health hazards of plastics. The first and second studies explore global issues of plastics through environmental justice (EJ) and the United Nations plastics treaty negotiations respectively. The first study narrates the plastics “life cycle” through connecting existing literature and case studies of distributive, recognitional, and procedural injustices at each cycle stage. In addition to peer reviewed scholarship and grey literature, this chapter operationalizes the voices of those most impacted as data commensurate to formal studies. The second study explores how the plastics industry and the global EJ coalition communicate opposing stances on “production reduction” in the plastics treaty. I share my research from attendance at the 4th UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee session (INC-4) in Ottawa, CA. The third study turns to the personal scale. Through autoethnography, I situate my personal experience with pregnancy, birth, and new motherhood in relationship with plastics through a critical, intersectional feminist lens. In this chapter, I explore the affect and anxiety around the paradox of questionable health and environmental repercussions of ubiquitous plastic, and the simultaneous feelings of ease and relief these plastics produce. Taken together, these chapters create a multidimensional analysis of plastics. I document the systemic, global nature of the environmental injustices of plastics, imbue readers with hope based on the EJ work of dedicated individuals working on the global plastics treaty, and provide a blueprint for those wrestling with the emotional tensions of a personal relationship with plastic materials.