Plastics, Markets, and the Preferential Option for the Poor: What Can be Done, and By Whom?

While disproportionate harms visited upon the most vulnerable call for drastic change to our current trajectory of producing, using, and disposing of plastics, the scale of the crisis is daunting. When considering the global economic factors driving this trajectory, it is tempting to conclude that until governments step in to stop markets from doing what they do “naturally,” the “rest of us” are effectively powerless. While granting the necessity of coordinated political action, this chapter proposes that economics and Catholic social thought each offer resources for taking a less fatalistic approach, and viewing the economy—and thus the plastics crisis—in more three-dimensional terms. Drawing upon these fields, this chapter sketches a view highlighting the deeply social nature of all economic activity, and the way that market processes and outcomes are sustained and shaped by cultural norms and practices undertaken at all levels of society. Such a perspective broadens our sense of who participates in economic governance and of what forms of action can be taken to steer global and local economies away from our mindlessly increasing reliance on plastics—and in so doing, opens up important questions about who is called to implement the preferential option for the poor.