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Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025

Anita Hardon Open the ORCID record for Anita Hardon [Opens in a new window] ,
Tridibesh Dey ,
Diana Pakasi ,
Efenita May Taqueban ,
Irwan Hidayana  and
Mark Nichter
Anita Hardon*
Affiliation:
Knowledge, Technology and Innovation, https://ror.org/04qw24q55Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
Tridibesh Dey
Affiliation:
Knowledge, Technology and Innovation, https://ror.org/04qw24q55Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
Diana Pakasi
Affiliation:
Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies, https://ror.org/0116zj450University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Efenita May Taqueban
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, https://ror.org/04ra49e34 University of the Philippines , Quezon City, Philippines
Irwan Hidayana
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Gender & Sexuality Studies Unit, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia
Mark Nichter
Affiliation:
School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
*
Corresponding author: Anita Hardon; Email: anita.hardon@wur.nl
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article challenges the OECD’s dominant downstream-centric framework on plastic pollution by drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in India, Indonesia and the Philippines. While OECD policies emphasize mismanaged waste and littering in low- and middle-income countries as primary causes of plastic leakage, the authors argue this perspective obscures the structural role of upstream plastic production, driven largely by petrochemical interests in the Global North. Through field data, the article reveals how “leaky” infrastructures – such as incineration plants in India, public–private waste partnerships in Indonesia and grassroots upcycling in the Philippines – fail to contain plastic waste, often exacerbating pollution and exposing communities to toxic emissions and microplastics. The study introduces a conceptual framework of “material and structural leakiness,” emphasizing how plastics and the infrastructures designed to manage them are inherently porous. It critiques the notion of shared responsibility, highlighting how it disproportionately burdens marginalized communities. The authors call for a paradigm shift away from recycling and clean-up as core solutions, advocating instead for upstream interventions like production caps and chemical regulation. The article underscores that without legally binding global commitments to reduce virgin plastic production, the toxic burden of plastic pollution will continue to fall on the most vulnerable populations.

Keywords

anthropologyleakinessplasticsAsiatransdisciplinary

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Type
Perspective
Information
Cambridge Prisms: Plastics , Volume 3 , 2025 , e27
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use.
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

Impact statement

This article provides insights from anthropological research on plastic use and waste management in metropolitan cities, provincial towns and peri-urban communities in India, Indonesia and the Philippines – often cited as three of the world’s top plastic polluters. We propose a conceptual framing of plastics as leaky, supported by collaborative multi-sited fieldwork and demonstrate that plastic pollution is a result of systemic and structural failures across the lifecycle of plastics, and not a result of material leakage, release or emission alone. We thus challenge the unfair attribution of plastic pollution primarily to low- and middle-income countries, especially those in South and Southeast Asia, by questioning whether downstream waste management can effectively contain plastic leakage. The article is written in the wake of the failed fifth meeting of the international negotiating committee to adopt an internationally binding treaty on reducing plastics in Busan in 2024. Two contentious issues were at stake during this meeting: the need to adopt a production cap on virgin plastics and the need to reduce toxic chemicals in plastic production to mitigate harm caused by plastic-associated chemicals. Drawing insights from community-level waste management practices that include efforts to upcycle and to find alternatives to plastics among populations severely impacted by plastic pollution, our conceptual argument advocates for policy measures to reduce the volume of plastics and hazardous chemicals. Acknowledgment of plastic’s inherent leakiness among scholars and policymakers should result in generation of effective, equitable interventions and regulatory policies.

Introduction

In 2022, the OECD proposed a conceptual framework suggesting that most environmental plastic leakage, especially in marine environments, stems from inadequate waste management and post-consumption littering, while relatively minor leaks originate from the early stages plastics’ lifecycles (Figure 1). The OECD presupposes efficiency and integrity in waste management systems – recycling, landfills and incineration – capable of containing plastics.

Figure 1. Plastic production, recycling, and waste flows, (source: OECD 2022).

Scientists and civil society activists dispute the OECD’s assumption that plastic leakage is primarily a downstream issue, highlighting widespread environmental contamination by macro-, micro- and nanoplastics in aquatic and terrestrial environments. They likewise note the significant health risks associated with chemicals from plastics entering food and biological systems, including human bloodstreams, tissues and placentas (Wright and Kelly, Reference Wright and Kelly2017; Cox et al., Reference Cox, Covernton, Davies, Dower, Juanes and Dudas2019; Zhang et al., Reference Zhang, Xu, Li, Chen, Ma, Zeng and Shi2020; MacLeod et al., Reference MacLeod, Arp, Tekman and Jahnke2021; Dey, Reference Dey2022). Next, we present insights from ethnographic research in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, revealing the direct impact of plastic’s leakiness on people in those countries – from the materials themselves, the chemicals they leak and systemic plastic waste management failures. We disclose how inefficient waste recycling and energy recovery and inadequate national regulatory policies exacerbate leakiness.

In ongoing Global Plastic Treaty negotiations, the OECD’s framework serves to bolster the position of petrostates. States with powerful petroleum industries have actively lobbied against a motion Rwanda proposed in 2024, supported by 85 other states. The Rwanda Motion, which India and Indonesia did not support and the Philippines did, advocates for a legally binding cap on the production of new (virgin) plastics and an obligation to phase out hazardous chemicals in plastics. The petrostates argued against upstream interventions, aligning with plastic and oil industry lobbyists calling for strengthening waste management infrastructures and increasing recycling to prevent plastic leakage in low- and middle-income countries considered the main contributors to pollution (Durrani, Reference Durrani2024). This powerful lobby successfully stalled the INC-5 negotiations, which concluded without an agreement.

Our ethnographic research challenges the prevailing narrative that primarily blames low- and middle-income countries for plastic pollution due to “waste mismanagement” (Jambeck et al., Reference Jambeck, Andrady, Geyer, Narayan, Perryman, Siegler, Wilcox and Lavender Law2015; Ocean Conservancy, 2015; Cottom et al., Reference Cottom, Cook and Velis2024), without acknowledging petrostates’ contributions to the problem by continuing to produce vast amounts of virgin plastics or the way the Global North compounds pollution by exporting its plastic waste to Asian countries.

Ethnographic insights into plastic’s leakiness

Building on a long line of scholarship in Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (Bennett, Reference Bennett2010; Gabrys et al., Reference Gabrys, Hawkins and Michael2013; Hardon and Sanabria, Reference Hardon and Sanabria2017; Nading, Reference Nading2017; Dey, Reference Dey2021), we propose a conceptual framework for analyzing plastic pollution challenging the idea that objects have a fixed or self-contained materiality. “The bodies of organisms and indeed of other things leak continually; indeed, their lives depend on it” (Ingold, Reference Ingold2012, 438). Plastics are likewise dynamic, fluid, constantly interacting with their changing surroundings. Nading (Reference Nading2017, 143) analyzes chemicals used to control malaria in Nicaragua as “leaky things having long afterlives implicated in fluid interactions involving complex material-socio-political processes,” tracing leakiness both as “material” – as when communities repurpose insecticides for rodent control – and “structural” – as when a wider range of actors than envisaged engage in controlling. Studying plastic use and waste management in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, we observe similar material and structural leakiness.

We conducted ethnographic interviews and long-term participant observation in environments with visible pollution (Pathak and Nichter, Reference Pathak and Nichter2019; Dey, Reference Dey2021; Pathak et al., Reference Pathak, Nichter, Hardon, Moyer, Latkar, Simbaya, Pakasi, Taqueban and Love2023; Pakasi et al., Reference Pakasi, Hardon, Hidayana and Rahmadhani2024), where residents must manage ever-increasing plastic waste polluting their air, water and soil, and entering their bodies. We enlisted university students to conduct plastic waste disposal mapping in Indonesia and the Philippines (2020–2022). Universitas Indonesia anthropology students conducted fieldwork in three communities located within 50 km of Jakarta: Bogor District, Tangerang City and Depok City. In each site, students conducted 10 ethnographic interviews with waste activists, local authorities and private landfill operators, validating their findings in six focus groups (two per site). University of the Philippines anthropology students conducted similar fieldwork in nine communities in Tarlac, La Union, Easter Samar, Laguna, South Cotabato, Cagayan de Oro, Aklan and Dinagat Island Provinces, and in two towns near Metro Manila (2020–2021). During two Anthropology of Plastics workshops in Aarhus in 2022 and 2023, we reviewed findings from long-term and focused research, documenting factors contributing to plastics’ material and structural leakiness and critically examining downstream intervention feasibility in each country.

Leaky waste infrastructures in India

Faced with growing volumes of high-calorie plastic solid waste, the Indian government employs waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration to generate power from plastics. By 2020, there were plans for at least 100 projects across the country in private–public partnerships (Kornberg, Reference Kornberg2019). WTE requires elaborate, integrated infrastructures to maximize waste collection, separate dry (incinerable) from wet (non-incinerable) waste and secure transportation to incineration plants through intermediary measuring and segregation sites. India’s growing consumer economy caused its INC-5 delegation, embracing large-scale waste incineration’s potential, to oppose the Rwanda Motion, emphasizing its “right to development” (Rwanda Motion, 2024) with a treaty that respects its unique priorities and capabilities.

In 2017–2019, Dey (Reference Dey2022) conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Ahmedabad, India that entailed following garbage trucks on their routes crisscrossing urban neighborhoods. His observations revealed plastic containment efforts failing. Ahmedabad, like other Indian municipalities, provided households with different-colored bins for dry and wet waste and used trucks with color-coded compartments divided by a steel wall. As garbage handlers drove through narrow city streets in the busy morning hours, residents hastened to dump their waste clumsily emptying their dry and wet bins into whichever compartment was closest. Thus, despite governmental planning efforts, dry plastics smothered in food waste, leaves, sanitary pads, paper and cardboard fell into both compartments.

This situation maps onto an overall trend whereby incinerators frequently receive large quantities of unsorted, wet mixed waste for which they are not designed (UNCRD and AMC, 2012; Cheela and Dubey, Reference Cheela, Dubey, Rathinasamy, Chandramouli, Phanindra and Mahesh2019). Municipal officials under budgetary constraints and public (and political) pressure purchase cheap machines with filtration systems inadequate to contain emissions (Doron and Jeffrey, Reference Doron and Jeffrey2018). Managers and engineers running the incinerators, needing to dispose of massive waste volumes within tight deadlines, cut corners. Poorly paid waste workers have little incentive to separate the mess to make it profitably – or even viably – incinerable. Mixed with food and other waste, plastics burn inefficiently: producing energy below target, causing facility breakdowns and leaking toxicants and greenhouse gases (Demaria and Schindler, Reference Demaria and Schindler2016; Luthra, Reference Luthra2017; Sambyal and Agarwal, Reference Sambyal and Agarwal2018; Dey, Reference Dey2025). Finally, there is the question of the afterlife of residues containing hazardous substances, which WTE advocates rarely acknowledge (Liu et al., Reference Liu, Zhao, Liang, Wang, Sun and Chen2021; Mantovani et al., Reference Mantovani, Tribaudino, De Matteis and Funari2021). Incinerator sludge often ends up in landscaping projects and roadbeds, without sufficient consideration for potentially leaking harmful chemicals into the environment.

Effective managing plastics downstream presents significant challenges for India, demanding sophistication in urban planning and systems integration exceeding the capacity of its existing waste management agencies, given the immense scale and complexity of the task. Daily infrastructure leaks increase environmental pollution and accelerate climate change.

Indonesia’s leaky public–private partnerships

The Indonesian delegates to the Global Plastic Treaty negotiations likewise opposed the Rwanda Motion. Indonesia’s burgeoning consumer goods sector heavily relies on non-recyclable, single-use packaging, creating significant demand for virgin plastics. Its National Plan of Action on Plastic (NPAP, 2020) mandates shared responsibility, including local communities in waste management, making producers accountable for recovering their post-consumer packaging, while commercial and industrial entities must collect and transport their waste to temporary disposal sites or landfills.

Despite government intentions, this public–private partnership contributes to plastics’ ongoing leakiness. Regulated shared responsibility implies equal distribution of agency and fails to account for the disproportionate burden placed on individuals with scarce resources to manage their garbage. Furthermore, it masks the failure of local administrative units to fulfill their plastic waste duties (Pakasi et al., Reference Pakasi, Hardon, Hidayana and Rahmadhani2024). Across the sites we studied, railroad tracks, roads and tracts of land piled high with rubbish were common.

Individuals collect waste and sell it to landfills. Landfill owners sort out the plastics with monetary value, but, due to limited space at landfills, often burn plastics for which they cannot receive compensation. Moreover, to avoid garbage collection fees, many households sort and burn their waste, mixing plastics with leaves to help ignite fires that also keep mosquitoes away. They use toxic ashes as garden compost or to landscape, unknowingly leaking chemicals into the soil, water and air (Velis and Cook, Reference Velis and Cook2021; Kováts et al., Reference Kováts, Hubai, Sainnokhoi, Eck-Varanka, Hoffer, Tóth, Kakasi and Teke2022; Pakasi et al., Reference Pakasi, Hardon, Hidayana and Rahmadhani2024).

Seeking to reduce household waste in landfills, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment helped establish community waste banks (Wijayanti and Suryani, Reference Wijayanti and Suryani2015; Raharjo et al., Reference Raharjo, Matsumoto, Ihsan, Rachman and Gustin2017). Intended as collection points to which citizens bring recyclables, the banks generally accept all dry waste, see Figure 2.

Figure 2. Citayam Waste Bank, Indonesia, May 2021 (source: Putri Rahmadhani).

Multinational corporations, facing pressure from citizens and Extended Producer Responsibility regulations, express shared sustainability goals (Foster, Reference Foster2008) with key consumer groups and launch programs to buy back plastic packaging. For example, Unilever partnered with waste banks to collect and recycle lightweight sachets with limited resale value and prone to becoming litter. Using the chemical CreaSolv technology, Unilever transformed plastic polymers into new sachets (Unilever, 2017), offering waste bank workers 800 rupiahs (USD 0.05)/kilogram to collect sachets. However, after a 2-year period, Unilever’s program abruptly ceased, leaving participating waste banks overwhelmed with flyaway sachets (McVeigh and Cahya, Reference McVeigh and Cahya2022).

Focusing solely on managing sachets downstream is problematic because manufacturers make them from cheap, low-quality materials, designing them to be thrown away after a single use (Hawkins, Reference Hawkins, Gabrys, Hawkins and Michael2013). Because of the difficulty of recycling and impossibility of reusing sachets, people commonly resort to burning sachets and other plastic waste, contributing to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases, fine particulate matter, and harmful byproducts like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into the air, which cause respiratory problems and cancer (Pathak et al., Reference Pathak, Nichter, Hardon, Moyer, Latkar, Simbaya, Pakasi, Taqueban and Love2023).

Leaky remediation in the Philippines

Although the Philippines’ consumer goods industry relies on virgin plastics just as much as Indonesia’s does, its delegation to INC-5, which included a Department of Health senior official and chairperson of the Mother Earth Foundation, supported the Rwanda Motion. The Philippine government is taking measures to contain plastic leakiness through local-level restrictions on single-use plastics and promoting recycling. While these steps are laudatory, our ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines revealed communities inundated with accumulations of plastic pollution, with single-use sachets and other forms of packaging as the largest contributors (OECD, 2022). Sold in every corner of the country in small sari-sari stores, sachets cater to people’s everyday needs. In the early 2000s, they replaced glass or metal containers for everyday commodities bought in bulk and sold to customers with little purchasing power on a tingi-tingi or piecemeal basis (Chang and Chen, Reference Chang and Chen2017). Our research revealed that low-income individuals value low-cost sachets for making access to a variety of products affordable and purchase them daily. Emerging regulations discouraging the proliferation of single-use plastics fail to include sachets, due to consumer necessity and the lobbying efforts of corporations that use glossy packaging to brand and market their products. Consequently, in August–September 2020, when 915 Filipino Break Free from Plastic Movement volunteers performed a brand audit of over 38,000 pieces of waste strewn over 17 beaches and urban centers, sachets comprised 40% of all plastic waste (Brand Audit, 2022).

Given the proliferation of sachets and the fact that, while not an uncommon practice, burning trash in the Philippines is illegal, community organizations have tried to come up with creative ways to encourage the upcycling of sachets into floor mats and bags as a way to generate income. Locals also upcycle plastic bottles and Styrofoam into plant containers, building materials and sports equipment. Despite small grants from local governments, the upcyclers find the market for their goods to be limited.

While leveraging existing community practices of repurposing plastic waste might appear a positive approach, our research revealed potential negative consequences. Community gardens are common in resource-constrained urban areas where there is little access to arable land or industry has contaminated the soil. Gardeners commonly reuse plastic containers to grow plants, unaware that they leak potentially harmful chemicals and disintegrate into microplastics, especially after prolonged exposure to direct sunlight. The cumulative effects on human health of plastic chemicals in soil used to produce food remain unclear, but nonetheless pose a concern to environmental scientists (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Shim and Kwon2014; Stratova et al., Reference Stratova, DiGiangi and Genon2018).

As plastics continue to accumulate, Filipino communities have begun exploring alternatives to the widespread use of sachets. Local initiatives, such as reintroducing the tingi-tingi system and establishing refill stations in sari-sari shops, which predominantly sell sachets, offer valuable lessons (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Kuha sa Tingi, a Greenpeace Philippines co-led project with Impact Hub Manila and the local government (source: Greenpeace Philippines 2023).

However, it remains uncertain whether consumers will readily embrace a system that limits their product choices. Ultimately, global regulatory bans on sachets as packaging materials are necessary in order to significantly reduce the environmental pollution they cause.

Conclusion

Highlighting the inherent leakiness of plastic products exposes the fallacy of the dominant narrative that irresponsible governments and citizens in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as in other Global South countries, are primarily to blame for plastic pollution in their environments. The current recycling and technological fixes are not comprehensive solutions to the plastic crisis. As Liboiron (Reference Liboiron2021), 16) notes: “cleaning just shuffles…[plastics] in space as they endure in time. You can’t recycle them out of the way…there is no away….”

Our research demonstrates that, in India, efforts to generate energy from incinerating plastics fall prey to messy, under-resourced logistics. In Indonesia, when the government outsources responsibility for waste to local public and private actors, plastic piles up. Insights from our studies in the Philippines reveal that downstream projects fail to recycle plastics into valuable goods because waste management is inherently leaky. Much like large-scale infrastructure projects in India, community-based remediation projects in Indonesia and the Philippines give the impression that clean-ups, recycling and repurposing can resolve the plastics problem, decreasing necessary pressure to regulate plastic production and hold manufacturers accountable for plastics’ post-consumer lives.

Recognizing the inherent material leakiness of plastics and the fundamental inefficiencies of infrastructures designed to close loops should spur our efforts to reduce plastic production and the use of hazardous chemicals in that production. Rather than depend on empty promises of a future circular economy that minimizes downstream microplastic leakage, we must develop and support strategies that acknowledge and address the problems plastics create, their chemical byproducts and the flawed downstream infrastructures that do not prevent pollution.

INC-5 negotiators’ failure to agree on the need to significantly reduce plastic production will lead to ever-increasing volumes of potentially toxic plastic waste that local waste management systems cannot process.

Open peer review

To view the open peer review materials for this article, please visit http://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.

Acknowledgements

We thank our interlocutors in India, Indonesia and the Philippines for sharing their experiences and views with us and allowing us to conduct fieldwork in their communities. We thank Helen Faller for her incisive editing of our contribution.

Author contribution

This article emerges from collaborative analysis of plastic’s leakiness across our field sites. Pathak hosted the workshops at Aarhus University. Hardon and Nichter developed the methodology for the focused ethnographies in Indonesia and the Philippines, with input from all the authors. Hardon led the analysis by writing a detailed concept note. Dey co-drafted this article and co-developed the concept of leakiness, sharing the results from fieldwork in India in his PhD thesis. Taqueban led the fieldwork in the Philippines and wrote an unpublished report presenting her findings and observed the INC-5. Pakasi and Hidayana conducted fieldwork in Indonesia and published an article with the results. Pathak and Nichter analyzed burning practices.

Financial support

Tridibesh Dey received funding from the Wageningen University and Research International Talent Post-Doc Grant, while the University of Exeter and Gauri Pathak’s Carlsberg Fellowship supported his PhD and post-doctoral fieldwork respectively. Anita Hardon’s ERC Advanced Grant Embodied Ecologies (grant nr. 101054300) funded research and Efenita May Taqueban’s trip to Busan to observe the INC-5. A research grant from the University of Indonesia supported Diana Pakasi’s follow-up research. A Carlsberg Foundation Young Researcher Fellowship (CF-20-0151) granted to Gauri Pathak supported the May 2023 analysis workshop. The Centre for Social Science and Global Health at the University of Amsterdam funded fieldwork in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Competing interests

There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

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Figure 0

Figure 1. Plastic production, recycling, and waste flows, (source: OECD 2022).

Figure 1

Figure 2. Citayam Waste Bank, Indonesia, May 2021 (source: Putri Rahmadhani).

Figure 2

Figure 3. Kuha sa Tingi, a Greenpeace Philippines co-led project with Impact Hub Manila and the local government (source: Greenpeace Philippines 2023).

Author comment: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R0/PR1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr1 [Opens in a new window]
Anita Hardon [Opens in a new window] Knowledge, Technology and Innovation, Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands
Revision round: 0
Role: author

Comments

Dear Editors, hereby we submit a perspective piece which was written based on our extensive anthropological fieldwork in India, the Philppines and Indonesia, by way of input into the deliberation towards a Plastic Treaty, post the Busan failure to come up with a binding agreement.

on behalf of the authors.

Anita Hardon.

Warm wishes

Anita

Review: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R0/PR2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr2 [Opens in a new window]
Reviewer_1
Date of review:  08 April 2025
Revision round: 0
Role: reviewer
Recommendation/decision: major-revision

Conflict of interest statement

Reviewer declares none.

Comments

The paper presents plastic leakage in three contexts (India, Indonesia and Philippines) and there is evidently some interesting field research that has been conducted. However there are several issues with the structure and presentation of the findings that must be addressed.

Abstract:

There is a lot of text describing the background. You should shorten this and add the specific research gap/research question that the study addresses. Also include 1-2 sentences to explain the findings and main conclusions.

Introduction:

The first part is quite lengthy and the description about decisions made by INC could be condensed.

Existing academic research should be cited and the research gap and novelty of this study should be properly explained.

Research methods:

The research methods used for data collection and analysis are only very briefly mentioned in the introduction and should be explained in a dedicated methods section.

Results: should be clearly presented in a stand-alone section. It’s not clear what the results of the study are, since the findings are presented very briefly alongside prior studies.

Discussion: The paper would benefit from a separate discussion section which compares the three cases, also in the context of existing literature.

Conclusion: This section should not present more results. It should conclude the main findings, contributions, limitations and areas for further research.

Review: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R0/PR3

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr3 [Opens in a new window]
Trisia Farrelly [Opens in a new window] School of People Environment and Planning, Massey University, New Zealand
Date of review:  23 April 2025
Revision round: 0
Role: reviewer
Recommendation/decision: minor-revision

Conflict of interest statement

Dr Tridibesh Dey is a member of the Scientists‘ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. I am the Coordinator of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty.

Comments

This will be an important paper that exemplifies the material leakiness of plastics and the leakiness of systems intended to ‘circularise’ plastics including in low-income countries and the local realities. This paper offers an excellent opportunity, too, to show how that leakiness has led some researchers to claim that these countries are the biggest polluters - and to dispel that myth to reveal where the burden of responsibility actually lies and the lived impacts of that burden shifting. However, in the abstract and early part of the manuscript this message is reinforced despite the content of the paper and the results of the ethnographic case studies telling quite a different story. The leakiness motif is an excellent one, but its application requires significant theoretical strengthening (through an anthropological lens) and consistent application throughout as a conceptual tool. Some recommendations for this below:

Section: Abstract page 3 line 3/4 and statement of impact; Text: India, Indonesia, and the Philippines—three of the world’s top plastic polluters— ; Comment: "The “Stemming the Tide” report was behind the oft-cited finding that the Philippines was the world’s third largest source of plastic leaking into the ocean. The report also claimed that five Asian countries, namely China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, contribute over half of the plastics that end up in the seas.

“The [Ocean Conservancy] report not only harmed the five countries wrongfully blamed for plastic pollution but misled for years governments and the public into thinking that burning plastic waste was a solution to the problem,” said Froilan Grate, regional director of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) - Asia Pacific.

While environmentalists agreed with the global deluge of plastic waste, they said the report “completely disregarded” the overproduction of plastic and plastic waste exports from Global North countries that even the United States-based organization Ocean Conservancy now agreed with. https://www.philstar.com/headlines/climate-and-environment/2022/07/19/2196536/group-behind-report-citing-philippines-among-top-ocean-plastic-polluters-retracted-2015-findings".

Section: Lines 12-15; Text: ‘’leakiness“: Emissions, releases and leakage are used to describe of plastic pollution to the environment in the INC negotiations. Acknolwedgement of these three terms and the rationale for the authors’ choice of ‘leakiness’ alongside these other terms is important. It is not clear how the authors differentiate between mismanaged waste and leakage into the environment at lines 12-15. Leakiness from material/political ecologies is a term applied in anthropology that needs to be explained up front so that it is used as a valuable tool to think with in this paper. See for example, Tim Ingold: ”The bodies of organisms and indeed of other things leak continually; indeed their lives depend on it. And in my view this shift of perspective, from stopped-up objects to leaky things, is what ultimately distinguishes what I want to call an ecology of materials from mainstream studies of material culture." (A rock is a rock is a rock). Then use the material ecology (anthropolgical understanding of ‘leakiness’ to exemplify the point that suboptimal waste infrastructure (and indeed efficient, safe and sustainable production substances materials, products, systems and processes) exacerbate the leakiness of plastics as material. There is a missed opportunity here to illustrate that plastics is a ‘leaky material’ and how and why. Some mechanics about how for example, chemicals migrate (leak) from plastic containers into food and drink content. How MNPs migrate across blood brain barrier, plastic chemicals can be dermally absorbed, etc. as examples of the liveliness (e.g. the work of Jane Bennett - vibrant matter/vital materiality) and the leakiness of plastics. Jane Bennett’s political materialism, primarily explored in her book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, also argues that political agency is not solely the domain of humans, but also extends to non-human matter and forces. This manuscript speaks to the political agency of plastics but does not reference the supporting academic sources.

Section: Line 19/20 page 5; Text 'leaching chemicals into …air; "At the INCs, emissions are generally used to describe pollutants to air including GHGs and particles. Leaching to air not appropriate. Leaking/leakiness/leakage would work better as a central motif and would produce a more cohesive, convincing. and integrated discussion if some version of the term were applied with all new evidence presented (as the anthropological conceptual tool to think with). For example, leakiness on page 5 could be more effectively used to illustrate the leakiness of materials and waste infrastructure and the impact on leaky food systems and ecosystems and into leaky human and nonhuman bodies. All this needs to be set up early in the paper and threaded throughout so that when the reader gets to Liboiron’s quotation in the conclusion - as Liboiron (2021, 16)

notes: “You can’t ‘clean up’ plastics because they exist in geological time, and cleaning just

shuffles them in space as they endure in time. You can’t recycle them out of the way…there is

no away…” , - they come away with an acute understanding of the leakiness (and possibly vibrancy and political materiality) of plastics and how the ethnographic case studies exemplify this leakiness. Liboiron’s quote also highlights the deep time implications of plastic pollution but the deep temporality of plastics is not referenced in the paper. "

Section: End of page 5; Link the leaky motif here to the conclusion that waste banks were overwhelmed with sachet waste - what leakiness led to this? The reader has to make their own connection here. What is the inevitable outcome when waste banks are overwhelmed with sachet waste?

Section: Page 6; “”"In the early 2000s, single-use sachets replaced glass or metal containers for everyday

commodities variety stores previously sold piecemeal or tingi-tingi": Comment: It is not clear how items were sold piecemeal or tingi-tingi. This is important as it is used as an example in the conclusion.

Use of ethnographic case studies: These showcase the value of ethnographic fieldwork in seeking local solutions to plastic pollution. However, in order to highlight the anthropological value of these accounts, what is needed is critical thinking supported by relevant anthropological literature and presented in a way that a broad readership (for Cambridge Prisms) would find accessible.

Conclusion: Comment: “The paper appears to aim to link the material leakiness of plastics with spiral dispersion and yet this is only referred to in the conclusion (too late). This along with the following focus/argument needs to be stated right up front in the article. ”"When governments outsource responsibility for waste to local public and private actors, plastic

piles up“” and their leakiness becomes particularly problematic at the downstream phase of their life cycle. None of this is entirely evident to the reader moves until they arrive at the conclusion.

page 8; “Awareness of the potential for plastic related chemical leakage should motivate interventions aimed at reducing plastic consumption”: Comment: Do authors not agree that interventions at plastic chemical, polymer and product production (before consumption) are crucial for reducing toxic chemical (and MNP leakage) and that interventions at production phase would also enhance waste management efforts? More examples of local solutions needed (tingi-tingi needs more explanation). What about other safer and more sustainable traditional plastic alternatives and nonplastic product substitutes supportive of local economies and ecologies?

Page 9: “As engaged anthropologists we propose engaging communities in behavioral experiments”: Comment: Experimentation with humans is not generally accepted as ethical within the anthropology discipline. Perhaps the authors are specifically referring to action research methods?

Page 9 Line 41 and 43: Capitalise ‘I’: Indigenous

Statement of impact: "the need to put a cap on the

production of virgin plastics": Comment:

need to cap global virgin plastic production. “transdisciplinary experiments” - the studies in the paper were not described as transdisciplinary and as stated, anthropologists do not consider human experiments ethical.

Recommendation: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R0/PR4

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr4 [Opens in a new window]
Garrath Wilson [Opens in a new window] Loughborough University Loughborough School of Design and Creative Arts, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Date of review:  29 April 2025
Revision round: 0
Role: Handling Editor
Recommendation/decision: major-revision

Comments

Whilst Reviewer Two has recommended only Minor Revision, the manuscript would be substantially improved by also responding to the comments of Reviewer One who have recommended Major Revision. Therefore, the overall recommendation is Major Revision.

Please review the comments of both Reviewers for detail, but to summarise they both found your work to be of interest to the research community, with Reviewer 1 providing comments on how to enhance the structure and presentation of the work, and Reviewer 2 placing emphasis on the theoretical lens. Taken together, we would encourage you to consider these comments and invite you to either address or rebut them in an anticipated revised submission.

Decision: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R0/PR5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr5 [Opens in a new window]
Steve Fletcher [Opens in a new window] School of Environment, Geography and Geosciences, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Revision round: 0
Role: Editor in Chief
Recommendation/decision: major-revision

Comments

No accompanying comment.

Author comment: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R1/PR6

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr6 [Opens in a new window]
Anita Hardon [Opens in a new window] Knowledge, Technology and Innovation, Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands
Revision round: 1
Role: author

Comments

Dear Editors,

Thank you for your comments and opportunity to resubmit our revised manuscript. We hope you see the improvements and look forward to hearing from you.

on behalf of all authors,

Anita Hardon

Recommendation: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R1/PR7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr7 [Opens in a new window]
Garrath Wilson [Opens in a new window] Loughborough University Loughborough School of Design and Creative Arts, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Date of review:  04 July 2025
Revision round: 1
Role: Handling Editor
Recommendation/decision: accept

Comments

Thank you for your patience. We appreciate that this process has taken longer than perhaps anticipated, however, I am pleased to say that we are satisfied with the revision of your manuscript and it will not require further review. Therefore, the recommendation is to now accept your revised manuscript.

Congratulations and thank you for taking the time to address the comments.

Decision: Confronting the material and structural leakiness of plastics: insights from multi-sited ethnography in India, Indonesia and the Philippines — R1/PR8

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2025.10022.pr8 [Opens in a new window]
Steve Fletcher [Opens in a new window] School of Environment, Geography and Geosciences, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Revision round: 1
Role: Editor in Chief
Recommendation/decision: accept

Comments

No accompanying comment.