The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Plastic Waste as Matter of Concern

Kimberly De Wolff
Communications and Science Studies
UC San Diego

This project investigated the production of knowledge about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the massive accumulation of plastic waste floating between California and Japan. To understand how the circulation of plastic pollution connects humans and oceans, California and the Pacific, this dissertation ‘followed’ pieces of waste collected by the Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation as they were transformed into knowledge through laboratory analysis, public display and media representation. Research found that where the media conjures images of the Garbage Patch as a dense ‘trash island,’ the circulation and display of scientific samples gives plastic pollution a form akin to a ‘toxic soup’ of dispersed fragments. Understanding how plastic waste emerges as a material problem is crucial to understanding possible solutions: while a trash island can potentially be cleaned up or recycled, toxic soup demands new kinds of cooperative policies that focus on consumption and disposal practices on land.