Henry Chilobwe, a Junior Research Fellow at CSR, this week co-presented a paper titled “A Season for Plastics” at two international conferences in the United Kingdom. Both Conferences were on the cost and impact of plastic products on aerial, terrestrial and marine ecosystems as well as on human health. He co-authored the paper with a Durham University Professor of Anthropology Dr. Felix Ringel. The first conference, Plastic Time workshop, was held at the University of St Andrews in Scotland while the second dubbed Plastics Future was held at the University of Portsmouth in England. Dr. Ringel presented the paper at St Andrews University while Mr. Chilobwe made the presentation at the University of Portsmouth.

 

The paper discusses the production patterns of plastic products and identifies cyclic relationships between industrial peaks and the agricultural season in Malawi’s commercial city Blantyre. The authors adopted ethnographic methods in gathering data for the paper and present a number of vignettes that depict the intricate relationships between industrial patterns, the farming season and community’s behavior towards usage and disposal of plastic products in Ndirande.

 

The major argument of the paper is that the price, value and movement of high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics in Blantyre depends on different factors, some of which relate to other petrochemical materialities - oil, fertilizer and plastics of all sorts; others to movements and flows of non-petrochemical things such as money, rain, crops and people. These different observations of intimately entangled movements sketch an empirically complex and arguably much more cyclical presence of plastic in Blantyre.

 

“Our participation at the conference has opened a gateway of opportunities for us now and for the future through networks that we have built. The most immediate benefit is that the organizers of the two conferences have asked that we develop the paper further into a manuscript for publication in international journals,” said Chilobwe upon return from the two conferences.

 

A season for Plastics is a product of the Sustainable Plastic Attitudes to Benefit Communities and their Environments (SPACES) project which CSR is implementing together with three UK-based universities-Durham University, Strathclyde University and Sterling University-as well as Dar es Salaam University College of Education (Tanzania), Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS), Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHES)and the Malawi Liverpool Heath Sciences all of which have different roles in the SPACES project. CSR is leading work package one of the project which is investigating pathways through which plastics are produced and distributed as well as people’s attitudes, perceptions and behavioral practices towards usage and disposal of plastic products.