Heather Davis

Who is on the front lines of plastic pollution? How does plastic manufacturing change communities, landscapes, and people’s lives? To answer these questions, this project centers one plastic cup. It is a clear 32-ounce polypropylene cup that you get from McDonald’s or Burger King, the kind that you fill up at the soda fountain. These cups are made in a factory in Evansville, Indiana. This study aims to provide a detailed ethnographic account of the communities living and working in proximity to plastics production facilities, centered around the manufacture of the plastic cup. Understanding the front-end processes—extraction, production, and the localized consequences of industrial activity—is essential for a comprehensive picture of the impacts of plastics and the potential solutions to plastics pollution. The environmental conditions in Southwest Indiana are not unique; they are, rather, emblematic of a broader pattern of industrial fossil fuel pollution and its impacts. Through the concept of banal violence, I aim to account for how the labor of plastic cup manufacturing and the mundane object of the cup itself participate in normalized forms of environmental harm that often escape critical attention precisely because of their ordinariness and integration into everyday life.