Plastic Pollution

Plastic pollution has always been a prevailing problem for countries, from curbing its demand to limit supply to dealing with its endless list of consequences such as food contamination, clogged pipelines, and absurdly long degradation time. Moreover, while many government officials and politicians have pledged to actively deal with this problem, as a resident in Southeast Asia, I have noticed, particularly throughout Covid-19 times, that the amount of plastic waste has neither decreased nor remained constant, but instead increased. However, the issue of plastic did not just catch my interest during the pandemic, but about four years ago, when China banned the imports of plastic waste and Southeast Asia, essentially, became a “dumping ground” of around 75% of global waste (1). Thus, for this project, I want to delve deeper into exploring what caused such catastrophes regarding plastic and how this issue reflects not just on the problems within the region but on our skewed perception of global “development.” To me, this understanding is integral to how we understand and see our world that is becoming more globalized, interconnected, and polluted--for if we know the core of the problem, we will be able to create an effective, practical solution that could better society as a whole. 

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Global development, in many ways, is inextricably tied to the agricultural and technological revolution, which is often labeled as the subset of modernity (2). I want to address that the idea of “modernism” is not a term that either reflects the overly optimistic side of societal progression nor should it become something to be scrutinized and revered. The term modern, according to Reymond Williams, “can be used to refer to anything that is contemporary, through the contrast between the ancient and the modern had become more commonplace in Europe by the late sixteenth century” (3). At the same time, modernization is often used to describe the “general trend of development progress that occurs within human societies” (3). However, while our leaning towards modernization is not inherently evil, the way society takes the idea of modernity to shape the way globalization and capitalism are mechanized can accentuate social and environmental problems. This can be seen in the exploitation of the Indonesian rainforest during the last decades of the twentieth century (4). In this particular regard, exploitation refers to the act of supremacy government bodies or large private corporations embody that allows them to turn natural, communal resources into capital. Particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, the Indonesian government permitted Japanese logging companies to burn, erode, and clear the country’s own forest since the Japanese companies held financial capital that the government officials desired (4). Consequently, the indigenous Indonesian citizens lack the means or resources to constitute their livelihood, but the momentary gains of the Indonesian government official receivers were split among those private individuals rather than distributed to the public, which promoted further economic divide and institution suppression (4). Furthermore, while globalization can definitely promote communal growth through the sharing of resources and information across nation-states, this example illustrates the mismanagement of globalization that caused a net negative impact on the environment and the people.