Foraging Plastics
48°08'49.3"N 69°14'28.7"W
BY POLINA SHUBINA AND ELIZABETH (LIZ) MILLER
We are each given a pair of gloves and a pathway to follow on the beach of Île aux Basques. Natalie, who has been on the expedition for 13 days suggests that we stay together to get a sense of how this plastic collection works. We share a large burlap bag. There is little visible trash on the beach, but we observe the others heading towards the grassy areas, where much of the hidden plastic lies, just out of sight.
All Aboard
We are latecomers to this mission. We join the last five days of an 18-day women-led sailing expedition to study the impact of plastic pollution on the St. Lawrence River. This is an interdisciplinary research-creation project, initiated by Anne-Marie Asselin, founder of the non-profit Organisation Bleue, Camille Deslauriers of Université de Rimouski, and Natalie Doonan of Université de Montréal, along with many other collaborators like ourselves. Expedition Bleue 3.0 is the third sailing trip related to the group’s ongoing research along the St. Lawrence River. We have varying degrees of expertise on the topic of plastic pollution, but we are here to address this problem from an interdisciplinary and feminist approach. There are 25 of us, including researchers, students, sailors, and divers. Together, we bridge the disciplines of marine biology, literature, philosophy, archeology, and digital media. Over 18 days traveling aboard a catamaran and a sailboat, our group will have visited 14 islands.
Our days are busy, and we share the tasks of water sampling and collecting sea urchins and mussels for microplastics analysis. We exchange disciplinary expertise through workshops on writing, listening with hydrophones, communication strategies, free diving, sailing, and more. The three-hour nettoyages or beach clean-ups are a daily group activity. Laurence Martel, coordinator of plastic pollution projects at Organisation Bleue, has led nettoyages for a wide range of audiences, and her passion is contagious. As we collect pieces, she enters them into an online database that specifies the type and size of the plastics we uncover. Laurence and Anne-Marie Asselin have developed and refined this protocol together since 2018. The clean-up walks are grounding, offering a way to come into relation with plastic along these remote shorelines as we remove pieces entangled in grassy roots, or witness aged packing material crumble in our hands. Together, we engage in the transformation of hidden discards into visible data, abandoned objects into archeological records, and plastic pieces into future art installations.
In preparation
While we both enthusiastically signed up for this expedition, we are not sure what to expect. I, Polina, an artist and cultural manager, have sailed before, but never as a researcher. I, Liz, an environmental documentary maker, have collaborated with inter-disciplinary feminist research teams, but never aboard a sailboat. In preparation for the trip, we immerse ourselves in documentaries about plastic pollution and discuss our earnest, but clumsy efforts to reduce plastics in our packing choices despite the fact that our waterproof clothing and camping gear all contain plastic.
The documentaries we watch as preliminary research use diverse strategies to reveal a shared message—there is no ‘away’ in the global accumulation of waste. The Story of Plastic (2019) sets the stage with a timeline and systems-level analysis of plastic production, from extraction to disposal, while exposing the petrochemical corporations that profit from it. Matter Out of Place (2022) offers a global scan of trash removal through long observational scenes, such as a trash truck airlifted from a Swiss ski resort, divers retrieving debris from a seabed in Greece, or volunteers sweeping Nevada’s desert after the Burning Man festival. Geographies of Solitude (2021) is a poetic documentary featuring a single protagonist, Zoe Lucas, and her forty-year mission to catalogue wild horses and trash accumulation on Nova Scotia’s remote Sable Island. We watch many other films, but these three linger as we consider the challenge of representing plastic accumulation that is at times visually arresting but also largely invisible.
Clean-ups as foraging
Our association with clean-ups is mostly informed by urban activities, where trash is in plain sight. But on these quiet northern beaches, we must forage it.
A nettoyage has its own rhythm. It often begins with a discovery, punctuated by, “You won’t believe this,” as one of us emerges from a stand of trees holding a giant piece of styrofoam. In our home environments, trash is efficiently removed—but here, we’re practicing a reversal of habits, actively recovering what has been discarded. Our finds bring both excitement and frustration, even rage. Too much packaging. Too many Amazon orders.
The sharp stones along the rocky coast and our focused attention sets a slower rhythm, allowing time to absorb the remote landscape and notice where our minds drift. Familiar memories of foraging for mushrooms or seashells surface—alongside more unsettling reflections on how the “busy-ness” of activities like recycling or clean-ups (McBride, 2011, p. 128) has been deliberately cultivated by plastic producers and those in power to redirect the energy of groups that might otherwise challenge the very industries causing the problem. In our solo yet coordinated practice, we have time to reflect on our immediate task, as well as the larger problem and our implication in the mess.
Reading Trash
When we land on an island, we form into groups of 3 or 4 with the canvas carrier bag as our organizing principle. I, Polina, prefer walking closer to the water, where I’d normally find small objects. I bring my miniature catch to Laurence to decipher and catalogue it together.
After several walks, we become better plastic foragers, attuning ourselves to the types, shapes, and names of various plastics: “Un petit styromousse, un grand morceau, un petit plastique rigide…” The aging plastic is fugitive - it can splinter into fragments in your hands, leaving little evidence. We are also reading contexts: Anne-Marie explains how in previous beach clean-ups the team identified influences of COVID, legalization of marihuana, and the crab industry’s activity through the increased presence of masks, tiny plastic bags, or elastics.
Large Shovel
Blue styrofoam balls
Lost wallet
Tire
Tampon applicator
Shiny Nestle wrapping
Coca-Cola cap
Plastic bottle with an event ad from 1991
Living with Trash
Trash is everywhere. We’re slipping and tripping on it. The big white bags with the trash we collect daily are on the cabin roof and on the bow. Other trash bags with the waste that we ourselves produce sit in the aft (the back of the ship).
Here on the boat, the trash we find is the trash we live with. Each day it claims more space and we find ourselves gingerly walking around it in cramped quarters. As we return with more bags from each nettoyage, we wonder if the boat will accommodate our growing collection. One night, a storm comes up. As the boat rolls from side to side, we take our gravel pills and discover that a bag with glass bulbs has exploded on the deck. Fragments of glass are not good for the boat, our bare feet, or our morale. It’s a discouraging moment that stirs up the messiness of our good intentions.
On the final day of our expedition, we arrive in Rimouski and begin unloading the trash from the boat. It feels both liberating and unsettling. The catamaran is finally free of its heavy burden, but the trash remains and we begin to sort, count, and determine the next destination of our trash collection - be it a recycling center, a landfill, or part of an art exhibition. Each bag is marked with the name of an island. Arranged together, the bags form an archipelago of garbage—a makeshift installation. We observe our own plastic waste - primarily from food packaging, a humble reminder of how deeply entangled we are in our plastic-dependent world. Heather Davis reminds us that we cannot wish our entanglements with plastic ‘away’ but that the bigger challenge is a deepening of accountability with our habits (Davis, 2022, 104). Moreover, we need to think with and be-with plastic to foster an expanded understanding of kin, responsibility, and relationality (Ibid, 107).
Back on land
In the months after the trip, we support each other to maintain our commitments. I, Liz, have added a new assignment to the Food, Media, and Culture class I teach each fall. I ask my students to join me in a 5-day ‘challenge’ to reduce plastic in our daily routines. Then, based on our findings, we each create a postcard. Students take on diverse challenges from eliminating plastic wrap, to carrying a reusable coffee cup, to avoiding plastic bottles, or even refraining from wearing clothes made of polyester, nylon, or spandex. We create a public display of the postcards, and much like our sailing expedition, the shared mission is motivating. I, Polina, have been sharing reflections and resources on plastics through my personal blog. It’s been inspiring to witness a curiosity to learn more, yet troubling to see how little is understood about the origins and the scale of the problem. As part of my PhD research, I am designing a project on a sailboat. Inspired by Discard Studies scholar Max Liboiron, who intentionally avoids plastic in research as part of the mission of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research, I will challenge myself to design the project with no single-use plastic, and document the challenges of this aspirational endeavor.
Our aim in joining the expedition and foraging plastic was to inspire new relations, behaviours, research directions, and creative actions and we are left with a series of ongoing questions: How are we storying our relationship to plastic? What plastic stories remain untold? What kinds of knowledge, films, methods, and collaborative practices are effective to shift our relationships to plastic, to invoke accountability and, ultimately, to work towards more systemic change?
Works Cited
Davis, Heather (2022) Plastic Matter, Durham: Duke University Press.
Liboiron, Max and Josh Lepawsky (2022), Discard Studies: Wasting, Systems, and Power. Boston, MIT Press
MacBride, Samantha (2012) Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States. Boston, MIT Press.
Polina Shubina has a background in theatre, puppetry, visual arts, and sailing. She is currently a student in Individualized PhD program at Concordia University, at the intersection of environmental humanities, performance and communication studies. Polina’s research-creation explores sailing and sailing ships as media for environmental inquiry, community building, and outreach. Polina is passionate about interdisciplinary projects around bodies of water and shorelines, as well as research and creation rooted in embodiment and collaboration.
Elizabeth (Liz) Miller is a documentary filmmaker and a Full Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Tiohti:áke/Montreal. Her work bridges community‑led media, environmental justice, and interactive documentary, with projects exhibited internationally in galleries, theatres, and science museums. She writes extensively on collaborative documentary initiatives and is the co‑author of Going Public: The Art of Participatory Practice (2018). Liz is an active member of the International Association of Women in Television and Radio and serves as a juror for the Peabody Awards in interactive media.
