An agenda for plastics crisis research in the synthetic age

Abstract

This survey synthesizes insights from environmental social sciences to recast the plastics crisis as a structural feature of growth-dependent economies instead of a problem solvable by consumer choice or incremental technologies. Rather than a within-field review of ecological economics, it maps adjacent literatures to specify what this field could study and how, clarifying researchable questions, suitable methods, and tractable indicators. The synthesis foregrounds connections between expansionary political-economic dynamics, globally uneven socio-ecological burdens across the plastics life cycle, and the power and knowledge relations that shape what is produced, measured, and governed. It calls for comparative, mixed-methods, multi-scalar work and for open, standardized data on plastics flows to strengthen causal inference and comparability. Shifting attention upstream—from end-of-pipe fixes to the transformation of provisioning systems—the paper charts lines of inquiry capable of aligning social metabolism with biophysical limits and human needs, providing a roadmap for ecological economics to organize and accelerate research beyond consumer or techno-managerial framings.