Olivia Meyer’s Dissertation Defense｜Plastic Panacea: Circular Economies and the Political Ecology of Plastic Waste in Thailand (April 9)

Please join us for Olivia Meyer’s dissertation defense on April 9th from 1-3pm on Zoom (link below)!

Dissertation Defense: Thursday, April 9 from 1-3 pm HST.
Dissertation Title: Plastic Panacea: Circular Economies and the Political Ecology of Plastic Waste in Thailand
Zoom link:  https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/84269194584
Meeting ID: 842 6919 4584
Passcode: phd

Committee:
Dr. Mary Mostafanezhad, Chairperson
Dr. Krisna Suryanata
Dr. Reece Jones
Dr. Micah Fisher
Dr. Ehito Kimura
 
Abstract: 
Plastic pollution represents a large-scale threat to global environmental health. Broadly considered one of the top contributors to marine plastic debris, Thailand developed a plastic circular economy, a system designed to prevent pollution by producing, consuming, and revaluing plastics more sustainably. Scholars have examined plastic consumption, waste management challenges, and inequalities in the circular economy. However, less is understood about how Thailand’s circular economies reconfigure plastic pollution as a process of value capture. Despite various efforts, many circular economy targets for reducing waste fail. This dissertation asks: How do diverse practitioners revalue plastic, and what are the implications for sustainability? To answer this question, I draw on ethnographic methods conducted in Bangkok, a hotspot for ocean-bound plastics and a hub of circular-economy initiatives. In this dissertation, I argue that the circular economy is shaped by three circular logics—growth, financialization, and commodification—that capture the value of waste. These logics drive circular economy imaginaries, goals, and activities, but struggle to address the microplastics, toxicants, and remediation costs that remain under-appreciated for their role in driving plastic pollution and inequality. While these logics obscure structural drivers of pollution and perpetuate waste, they also reflect practical responses to plastics that have already been produced and spread uncontrolled in the environment. Next, I examine spatial practices of revaluing waste as expressions of care. I build on the volumetric turn in social science to analyze pollution through a framework of plastic volumetrics. Circular economy practitioners, including recyclers and nongovernmental organizations, used three-dimensional spatial thinking to keep plastic waste out of the environment (e.g., quantifying and representing plastics across multiple dimensions when calculating how many bottles they can transport with a truck or articulating the distribution of waste submerged in a canal). Through practices of calculation, valuation, and containment, practitioners can resist the volumetric failures of state inaction and transcend capital-driven valuation that would otherwise only account for profitable materials. Attention to their quotidian volumetric calculations of plastic objects demonstrates how practitioners use spatial knowledge to expand circular-economy practice and representation, extending care for others, the environment, capital, and plastic. Ultimately, I show how practitioners engage in a praxis of contradictory care, navigating imperfect trade-offs as they learn to live with plastics. This dissertation advances our understanding of how local decision-making and global expertise shape waste solutions. It examines values, practices, and spatial representations underlying the plastic circular economy. In doing so, it provides new frameworks for interpreting value and countering waste. Finally, as this research examines how practitioners create value that sustains visions of more hopeful environmental futures, this work contributes to emerging scholarship at the intersection of cultural economic geography and the political ecology of plastic waste in Asia.