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Paper short abstract

The plastics industry is a part of the chemical industry sector that faces challenges related to accumulation and pollution. This article presents preliminary findings of an investigation into the controversies surrounding the future of this industry in the context of the imperative to decarbonize.

Paper long abstract

This paper will outline the research perspective and some preliminary results of a study of controversies on the decarbonization of the plastics industry. This research is conducted in the frame of SPECULAR, a French interdisciplinary project involving field enquiries and participatory research conducted with industrial stakeholders. The plastics industry is an important part of the chemo-industrial sector, whose contemporary challenges have been largely documented in STS and more general social science literature. The development of plastics is one of the innovations that has the most affected the conditions of everyday life and industrial production since the second world war, deeply shaping the materiality of the innumerable objects that make up modernity. Yet the plastics industry faces a series of strong issues. Plastics release carbon compounds into the atmosphere through their production, but also into soils and marine environments through the waste they generate. Plastic production is huge and is expected to continue, with an OECD prediction of a three-fold increase over the next 20 years. The extent and nature of the problems related to plastic accumulation, as well as the possible solutions (such as optimizing processes, recycling, reducing use through sufficiency practices, developing bio-sourced alternative to petro-sources plastics, etc) are the object of controversies involving various stakeholders: manufacturers and industry actors, public laboratories, NGOs and activists, public policy actors, etc. One of the aims of the project is to examine how these controversies evolve and develop with the imperative of decarbonization promoted in contemporary public policy programs.