The gift of Plastic

How could interlaced love and abhorrence shape ecosystem-conscious plastic consumption?

Look what I got, Christmas gift! she says in a sarcastically happy voice while smiling. As she extends her hand in my direction I see a plastic, battery operated, candle.

I take it in my hand, my eyebrows furrowing and I stare at the thing in a long silence. She laughs, well-knowing of my feelings towards plastic imitations of any kind.

But hey, it burns forever without the fire hazard! she jokes.

My hand felt so heavy that my heart dropped too.

Exactly, someone gifted you eternity in a very cretin way… This will be here long after any ideas of you both are gone… entering the bloodstream of generations to come… I almost whisper.

I wait for the Debbie-Downer-womphwomph eye roll. But it didn’t come. Instead, we both stare at it. I take the rare opening to express my grief a bit more freely, just to know how it feels... I let it calmly and slowly pour out:

It’s just so incredible, the amount of violence contained in such a small thing gifted with intentions of love, you know?! the metals and minerals in the batteries were extracted from some land we don’t know about, by some likely-exploited hands, the mercury can contaminate underground waters if we don’t dispose of them properly, perhaps even when we do… and this hard plastic encasing, made from millions of years old fossil fuels violently extracted from the land, was made in China by definitely-exploited hands, maybe Uyghur in a concentration camp; and after all this… this thing will be here for centuries to come, permeating the ecosystem in its many non-organic shapes… likely hurting life all the way through… and there is so much more we don’t even know yet… It’s just so heartbreaking that we would produce such a thing for 2 euros profit of some chain store, and then wrap this small token of monumental violence and gift it as a gesture of ‘I appreciate you’… Are we this exhausted…?

I look up, there is still a chance for the ‘ok, killjoy ’, but it does not come. There’s a sad silent smile in its place. The kind that we do to say to each other ‘yeah, I feel powerless too.’

I hold the plastic candle between us and ask in a lighter voice: Can I keep it?

She lets out a laugh. What will you do with it?

I’ll put it in my altar.

We have been trying a loathe and avoid campaign on plastic that has gained some important policy changes within our local urbanized communities and prompted the creation of healthier product alternatives. However, plastic production is (and is expected to remain) increasing, globally.

According to OECD numbers ‘Plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years, driven by growth in emerging markets. Global plastics production doubled from 2000 to 2019, reaching 460 million tonnes.’

Majority of the plastic circulating is also primary plastic, produced anew, since our plastic waste management and recycling is failing miserably world-wide. Majority of our plastic ends up in landfills… (and I invited you to stop and reflect on the word land-fill…)

And that which is not filling the land with long-lasting petrochemicals locally, ends up being shipped ‘far away’ to contaminate the drinking water and aquatic ecosystems of Africa and Asia. As always, the most vulnerable pay for the distorted ideas of comfort of colonialist oil drunkards.

Worrying about the plastic pollution in Tanganyika lake, in Africa, starts by resisting and banning fracking projects in our Western lands. By being conscious of our local collective consumption and waste management without losing focus of global consequences. There is no ‘far away’ plastic problem because all ecosystems are interlaced. Our local consumption is never disconnected from global consequences.

Denying our intimate entanglements with the plastic expression of fossil fuels while we wear it, smoke it, chew it, decorate our homes with it… is at best immature and at worst violent. Gladly accepting our entanglements with the Amazon forest and denying them with Amazon Inc. is some bypass bullshit that betrays any true connection to the Earth’s ecosystem.

So, what space does this plastic candle, this dystopian manifestation of colonial-capitalist distortions, have in my rooting altar to the dynamic ecosystemic beauty of life?
The most sacred space of all: the place for alchemizing ideas of purity, exceptionalism, and non-accountability. The place were bypass, numbing and looking-away are no longer allowed. The place where rooted respect, responsibility and resistance are born from.

The only baffling question is how I have intentionally kept plastic out of the threads of my definitions of sacredness for so long, despite all the invitations, despite all somatic wisdom calls…
Despite having discovered myself instinctively closer to plastic than wild deer in a GTDF workshop, despite having someone angrily shout at me for not including polyester in a workshop, despite having loved the art activism of remembering life through plastic waste, despite loving my 33 year-old plastic Christmas tree, even as an ironic symbol of superficial and disconnected love of aliveness, as are all other plastic plants…
Despite knowing that other species: bacteria, moths, beetles, and fungi are dealing with its presence…

The visceral repulsion I feel for useless, thoughtless, plastic objects will not disappear, it shall not! it is a useful guide. That is not what I mean. What I’m wondering is:

What could love do for our relationship with pollutant plastic?

How could love challenge the disposable?

How could love offer respect to the eternal?

How could respect then remember the porosity of the global ecosystem to our every plastic consumption?

What if more than indifference or repulsion, love would kick in when we hold plastic to remind us that what we hold is millions of years of transformation of life into fossil fuel and many more millions of years to come. What if we would remember that to extract that finite prime matter the earth was fracked, ripped apart; that lives, human and non-human, were and will be impacted by that that we hold...

*holding a plastic candle with purchasing intent*

*pause*

*engage ecosystemic love*

What holds love more fittingly, to gift a plastic candle or to halt that consumption?

This plastic candle will remain in my altar and my home as long as I can keep it from the landfill. It will remain as remembrance of the suffering behind its creation and ahead of its undoing, and as a plea:

Let us not become so exhausted that we unroot from our Home. May we remember our ecosystemic interlacings with each other and all life.

‘without the fire hazard! ‘

Contextual note: When I refer to “we/us/our” in statements of accountability for modernity’s violences I mainly refer to people from lower struggle contexts in the global North. Acknowledging that there are many, complex and intersectional aspects to anyone’s life that are unknown and unable to be honored by simple or geographical labels. Critical thinking, nuance, complexity and creative inquiry are always invited in, and the main goal of, this space.