Presentation short abstract

Rivers and agricultural regions now act as hidden reservoirs of global plastic flows. Drawing on cases from Belgium and Turkey, this talk explores how waste infrastructures and government inaction generate socio-environmental injustice and transform hydro-social and agrarian worlds.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation gathers research on two distinct but interconnected sites where plastic waste has become physically embedded in the landscape: the waterways of central Belgium and the agricultural region of Adana in southern Turkey. In both locations, waste gradually accumulates over time, influencing local environments, labour dynamics, and government policies. Although different, these sites embody asymmetric economic relationships. Turkey remains one of Belgium’s main destinations for plastic waste exports.

In Belgium’s Dyle-Gette watershed, years of neglecting waste policies have transformed rivers into concealed storage sites for plastics and other toxic substances. When restoration groups and volunteers remove hundreds of tonnes of trash from riverbeds, they expose the extent of a problem that authorities have rarely acknowledged or addressed.

In Adana, global waste shipments arrive alongside agricultural activities. Plastic is burned, stored, and recycled within the same areas where food is cultivated and harvested. Farmers, residents, and waste and agricultural workers coexist with smoke, contaminated soil, and evolving health risks. While agriculture is often seen as productive and waste as destructive, in Adana, these systems overlap: plastic waste sustains economic interests while creating new vulnerabilities for people and land.

By examining these cases together, this presentation demonstrates how rivers and farmlands become silent repositories of global waste. It underscores how pollution becomes invisible, how responsibility is unevenly shared, and how daily labour sustains waste management systems.