ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 considers the relationship between fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) – heavily packaged disposable items such as beverages, snacks, cosmetics, and personal care products – and the plastic pollution crisis. A handful of FMCG corporations dominate the market and contribute unsustainable levels of packaging waste. In addition to assessing the role of powerful FMCG corporations and brands in propelling this crisis, the chapter explores the promotional and logistical functions served by packaging and the convenient, accelerated consumption it enables. The critique advanced emphasises capitalism’s growth imperative as a broader force driving this crisis, and also observes how industrial-scale plastic consumers (FMCG brands) and producers (petrochemical companies) profit from plastic packaging. Drawing on Karl Marx and Nancy Fraser, the chapter evaluates the character of plastic packaging not simply as a material but also as a commodity, and situates the plastic pollution crisis in a longer history of environmentally destructive, fossil fuel-dependent production and consumption.
