Plastic waste is constantly ending up in the oceans and pollutes the marine environments globally. Common solutions propagate an imperative of cleaning and sorting, for instance fishing plastic waste out of the oceans with considerable technical effort or preventing pollution in advance with the help of a “plastic-free” living. The environmental humanities scholar Kim De Wolff, who researches the connections between the global environment and everyday cultures, consumption and waste, considers those kind of strategies not to be very promising.

In the ISOE Lecture 2020/21, the U.S. scholar shows why solutions aimed solely at waste control are not sustainable: They emphasize the separation of nature and society instead of focusing on the complex interrelationships. In her lecture, De Wolff will present an “ethics of entanglement” and, drawing on feminist new materialism as well as on Science and Technology Studies (STS), she argues that recognizing the powerful agency of plastic can ultimately contribute to less plastic waste. 

How to Live Responsibly on a Plastic Planet 

Kim De Wolff 
Assistant Professor of Environmental Philosophy 
University of North Texas, Denton (USA)

February 25, 2021, 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 
Online event
Take part in the discussion: #ISOE_Lecture

Register with the subject line “ISOE Lecture” at veranstaltungen(at)isoe.de. 

The lecture is in English.

Organized by: ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research in cooperation with the sub-ject area Industrial and Organizational Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Department 03, Goethe University.