https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B798Ei0UDXM&feature=youtu.be While early research into plastic pollution was limited to marine ecologies, the links between plastic food contact material, food production, and human health are starting to gather apace. Civil society groups tasked with understanding plastics pollution from holistic, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural perspectives have been instrumental in making these connections. From this vantage point, plastics can no longer be seen as inert objects; but as unpredictable, lively matter that resists containment within a ‘circular economy’. This paper will show how the relational ontologies of plastic food contact materials and chemicals and plastics in agricultural soils may challenge not only current food safety standards in Aotearoa, but also the enrolment of plastics in a circular economy.
