The Cruel Optimism of Plastics: Promissory Technologies and the Temporalities of Inaction

Abstract

The plastic problem is a complex, multi-faceted issue that requires coordinated global action and systemic change to address. In this article, we investigate how what we call ‘promissory technologies’ affect people’s capacities to understand the systemic changes necessary to significantly reduce global dependencies upon plastics. Engaging with Lauren Berlant’s conceptualizations of ‘cruel optimism’ and ‘technologies of patience’ we delineate three overarching (and sometimes overlapping) forms of promissory technologies related to plastics and the temporalities associated with them: 1) technologies of patience, 2) technologies of deflection, and 3) technologies of salvation. We argue that these technologies enable unabated attachments to plastics even as the harms of these attachments become ever-more abundant and evident.

Introduction

The Anthropocene, the much-contested geological era defined by anthropogenic planetary changes, is a time of urgent global environmental challenges. The Earth systems framework posits that of the nine boundaries that are critical to the stability and resilience of contemporary forms of life on the planet—climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion, and novel entities—seven have been exceeded (Richardson et al., 2023; Sakschewski et al., 2025). Every day brings news of further environmental degradation. Global action to mitigate these harms is slow, inadequate, and piecemeal; among environmentally concerned citizens and communities, there is a feeling that as a result of the lack of decisive action, the planet is moving inexorably toward crisis.

In this broader context, the presence of plastics has become so ubiquitous, appearing in sediments and new kinds of rock formations, that some scientists have argued that the appearance of plastics in the geological record could become a marker of the Anthropocene (Corcoran et al., 2014) or even a geological era called the Plasticine (Rangel-Buitrago et al., 2022). In their proliferation and multi-scalar breadth, plastics pose issues of contamination and toxicity throughout their life cycle. Over 90% of plastics are produced from fossil fuels, perpetuating a dependence on a carbon economy. Plastics have been estimated to be responsible for 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Cabernard et al., 2022). Estimates from Europe suggest that around 40% of all plastics produced annually are disposable and have use spans of less than six months (for example, as packaging), making this a high turnover industry and a high contributor to worldwide waste burdens (Pathak, Hinge, & Otzen, 2023).

Micro and nano plastics (MNPs), which result from the wear and tear of plastics during and after use, have been found in tap and bottled water, salt, bodies, the food chain, and the human placenta (e.g., Conti et al., 2020; Kosuth et al., 2018; Prata, 2018; Ragusa et al., 2021; Waring et al., 2018). MNPs in the soil affect soil structure and its ability to support growth (de Souza Machado et al., 2018; Renault et al., 2024). Various endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as bisphenol-A, are added to plastics to enhance plasticity, and these leach out during use and after their disposal (Meeker et al., 2009).

Meanwhile, plastic litter, whether in the oceans, waterways, or on land, threatens ecologies. A lack of efficient, accessible, and adequate waste collection and management services across the world mean that much plastic waste is dumped, buried, or burned in the open. Open burning releases toxicants and persistent organic pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, into the air and soil (Pathak, Nichter, et al., 2023). Recycling is a highly inadequate tool to tackle the issue; less than 10% of all plastics are recycled (Geyer et al., 2017), and recycling typically involves the shipping of wastes to lower-income countries with lax labor and environmental regulations (Cook & Velis, 2022; Stoett, 2024).

Circuits of plastic production, consumption, recycling, and disposal are globally distributed, and toxicants associated with plastics, plastic refuse, and plastic contaminants circulate around the world; they cannot be contained or controlled within national borders alone. Plastic pollution is also implicated in global international and intranational power relations related to waste colonialism, extractive economies, and uneven resources (Gündoğdu, 2024; Stoett, 2024). The plastic problem is a complex, multi-faceted issue with consequences across several domains that requires coordinated global action and systemic change to address. Such change, however, has not been readily or adequately forthcoming. In public discourse, plastic pollution has emerged as one of the most prominent global environmental challenges of contemporary times. Recognition of this issue led to a UN resolution to develop internationally binding legislation under a global plastics treaty—negotiations for which (at the time of writing) have proven inconclusive. These negotiations have been facing stiff challenges, not just from industry bodies but also from member states, with debates about whether the focus should be on waste management or on issues related to production and use (Dreyer et al., 2024). Some countries and regions have independently introduced plastic control legislation such as single-use plastic bans, but these have tended to be haphazard, fiercely contested, and more often than not inadequately implemented (Knoblauch & Mederake, 2021). In 2022, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2022) estimated that if current trends continue unfettered, annual global plastic production is expected to triple by 2060. While this increase in plastic production is undoubtably industry led—itself a complex and multi-layered problem (see Mah, 2022)—once plastics arrive as both consumption items and facilitators of consumption practices, even if they are initially or even consistently unpopular, their role in societies can quickly become difficult to unseat.

We see the reasons for inaction on plastic pollution problems as being multi-faceted, globally interrelated, and locally contested. Though these reasons are well beyond the scope of this article, Meikle’s (1995) excellent history of American plastics, for example, chronicles how over the course of the twentieth century, various actors, advertisers, industry players, and cultural forces have enabled plastics to embed themselves as key parts of infrastructure and daily life in the USA. As Meikle demonstrates, this has happened even as attitudes toward the material have included enthusiasm, consternation, ambivalence, protest, as well as ignorance and agnotology (Proctor, 2008) regarding the problems, risks, and impacts of plastics.

In this article, through the lens of plastic pollution, we examine the role of promissory technologies and their temporalities as crucial to understanding the current state of affairs with regard to environmental (in)action. As three anthropologists who have been studying plastics for the past decade, we are often asked about the plastic problem and potential solutions to the crisis. Discussions with friends, strangers, acquaintances, and at public events involve fielding iterations of a few common questions, especially about the effectiveness of various plastic waste disposal methods, plastic control policies, and innovations related to plastics. Here, we draw from these experiences as opportunities for ethnographic engagement in different sites across the world as well as for engagement with each other, in which we used these shared experiences as sites of inquiry (Norris et al., 2012). Some of the conversations we discuss below took place during day-to-day life while we were immersed in formal fieldwork, and some are from our experiences elsewhere. All of these conversations represent consistent themes that all three of us have repeatedly encountered as we live, research, and work around the world. As such, these conversations provide insights into how imaginaries of promissory technologies optimistically frame and/or block people’s capacities to understand the systemic changes necessary to significantly reduce global dependencies upon plastics, particularly ‘disposable’ plastics. We argue that these promissory technologies, and the three temporalities associated with them, encourage an affective state of cruel optimism, promoting a sense of agency while simultaneously enabling the continuity of the status quo. These technologies can encompass but also differ distinctively from greenwashing. In this article, we will focus on technologies that are not implicated in intentional and misleading claims, such as labeling products eco-friendly by implying that minor product improvements have a significant environmental impact, or through highlighting one aspect of a product to distract from other more harmful components (de Freitas Netto et al., 2020). However, they do include dimensions of greenwashing that help shift the consumer gaze away from difficult environmental questions and toward a narrative that allows consumers to overestimate their ability to contribute to addressing environmental challenges, such as through ‘environmentally friendly solutions’ that are out of proportion to the scale of the problem they purportedly target (Jones, 2019).

Promissory Technologies and Cruel Optimism

In Cruel Optimism, Berlant (2020a) describes an object of desire as a cluster of promises that attach to a person, place, or thing and that explain people’s attachments to that object. Such affective investment can keep people—at both an individual and collective level—locked in relationships even when those relationships are harmful. The conditions of ordinary life that wear their subjects down are thus reproduced; the activity of reproducing such patterns of living is also the activity of being worn out by them. Berlant terms this dynamic one of ‘cruel optimism’—when the object of desire or attachment is an obstacle to one’s flourishing. They see cruel optimism as characteristic of postwar Europe and the USA, where attachments to unachievable fantasies of a good life and social mobility keep increasing numbers of people locked into conditions of precarity and contingency. The adjustments that this dynamic requires rely on affective engagement and new modes of temporality that allow people to survive the present.

Widespread contemporary dependencies on plastics reflect an unhealthy attachment to these materials which continues unabated, even as the harms of such an attachment become ever-more abundant and difficult to ignore (also see, e.g., Sattlegger, 2021). Disposable plastics, as objects, promise convenience, mobility, hygiene, purity, and access (Abrahms-Kavunenko & Brox, 2022; Andrady & Neal, 2009; Hawkins, 2012; Pathak, 2022; Reichhardt & Abrahms-Kavunenko, 2022). Single-use plastics are tied to practices of disposability that are critical to contemporary consumer culture and linked to apparent reductions in labor, care, and effort (Hawkins, 2017; Pathak, 2025). As a result, they form key infrastructures and permeate contemporary ways of living. Although dependence on plastics is uneven and varies as the result of a number of factors, it is nevertheless a problem of global structures of production, trade, and disposal. In using terms such as ‘widespread’ and other generalizations, we are referencing this global, structural quality, even as we recognize significant degrees of difference in dependence between and within communities, regions, and nations.

When it comes to environmental and sustainability problems, ‘techno-optimism’ or the ‘exaggerated and unwarranted belief in human technological abilities to solve problems of unsustainability while minimizing or denying the need for large-scale social, economic and political transformation’ (Barry, 2012, p. 108) continues to dominate the larger societal approach. ‘Techno-fixes’, which privilege the technological in the face of socially complex problems, have been criticized for being simplistic and for presuming rather than investigating the problems they solve (e.g., Huesemann & Huesemann, 2011; Rosner, 2004). Nevertheless, they have been favored, including in the sustainability arena, by policymakers wishing to avoid the political problems arising from contradictory stakeholder agendas. Crucially, techno-fixes ignore how technologies are always socially embedded, implicated in notions of social order, and generative of and interwoven with expectations and imaginaries of possible future states. Scholars, especially within STS, have looked at the performativity of the representations and rhetoric surrounding technologies and how they shape the activities and strategies of various actors, forms of governance, social structures, and research developments, legitimating some pathways while foreclosing others (e.g., Jasanoff & Kim, 2009, 2015; Majumdar, 2022; Mikami, 2015; Sadowski & Bendor, 2019; Sismondo, 2020). This literature recognizes that technologies can be implicated in promissory narratives and rhetoric even though those promises may not always be realized (e.g., Brown & Michael, 2003; Morrison, 2012; Petersen et al., 2015). The dominant representations surrounding various promissory technologies and techniques for dealing with plastics elicit particular temporalities and horizons. These speak not just to technologies in the conventional sense of the application of science but also in the Foucauldian sense of the way that modern sociopolitical systems order and govern individuals and populations (Foucault, 1980). Engaging with Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism’, we expand beyond their ‘technologies of patience’ to outline two other forms of promissory technologies. Overall, we delineate three overarching (and sometimes overlapping) forms of promissory technologies related to plastics and the temporalities associated with them: 1) technologies of patience, and then, two novel additions to Berlant’s schema, 2) technologies of deflection, and 3) technologies of salvation. In doing so, we offer analytic tools with which to examine the affective and temporal politics of ‘green’ techno-fixes and argue that by encouraging a state of cruel optimism, these technologies enable the unabated continuation of attachments to plastics even as the harms of such attachments become ever more abundant and evident.

Here, we would like to distinguish between hope and optimism. As Eagleton (2015) points out, optimism is a temperamental orientation rather than a disposition obtained through reflection and study; as such, it has often served to sustain the belief that science and technology or politics-as-usual can provide solutions for the ecological crisis. Even when environmental activists within movements such as those of ‘eco-miserabilism’ or ‘collapsology’ actively seek to dismantle such optimism, they often continue to engage with forms of hope (e.g. Cassegård, 2024; Thaler, 2024).

Technologies of Patience

Berlant describes ‘technologies of patience’ as those techniques that create a lag in perception and allow a suspension of thinking about the cruelty of the now through the concept of the later (Berlant, 2020a, p. 28, 2020b, p. 222). What we term ‘promissory technologies of patience’ similarly encourage deferred temporalities by signposting a desired sustainable future and indicating the active preparation for it, comparable to what Groves (2017) has labelled an ‘environmental politics of anticipation’, by which projected (environmental) future states are incorporated into present practices and functions. Technologies of patience acknowledge the need for new structures (in the case of plastics, for managing plastic production, consumption, and disposal), but they also encompass a techno-optimism that suggests that the problem can be solved through innovation and human ingenuity rather than by radical shifts in lifestyle and aspiration. Technologies of patience advocate a future-oriented perspective that embraces delayed gratification.

Some technologies of patience encourage citizens to take on new subjectivities that train them to engage these technologies while promising that the technologies will ‘soon’ be rolled out at scale. Circular economy frameworks, and the recycling technologies they (will) rely upon, are prime examples of such technologies. Denmark, where Gauri is and Saskia used to be based, incinerates its waste but has set ambitious goals to reduce the incineration of plastics as waste by 80% between 2020 and 2030 by increasing the reuse and recycling of plastics (Government of Denmark, 2020; Ministry of Environment of Denmark, 2021). To this end, segregated waste disposal stations, with separate options for plastic waste, food waste, textile waste, e-waste, and residual waste have been gradually introduced across the country. The plastic and packaging waste bins, however, accept all kinds of plastics, from rigid containers (of different polymers) to multilayer packaging and tetra packs (containing, for example, paper, metal, and plastic mixes). During a visit to a local government incineration facility in April 2024, Saskia and Gauri were told how segregation had been rolled out but the volume of plastic waste—high calorific waste required for incineration—had not declined, suggesting that much plastic waste was ending up in the residual waste category; new behaviors were still being learned. The guide at the incineration facility confirmed that the recyclables were not processed in Denmark—they were sent to Germany. It is not entirely clear what happens to that waste in Germany, but research has suggested that this waste is exported beyond the EU to lower-income countries for purported recycling (D’Amato et al., 2023; Dalgaard, 2019); much of such shipped waste ends up being dumped or burned in the open (Pathak, Nichter, et al., 2023).

Recycling rates for plastics stand at less than 10% of all plastic waste, although this number varies across countries and depending upon the type of plastic (Geyer et al., 2017). As of the writing of this article, not all plastics can be readily recycled. Even if the technology exists, it is not always commercially attractive to recycle all types of plastics (even when shipping to places with less stringent labor and environmental regulations and hence, lower costs). The most attractive candidates still require homogenous polymer streams and clean waste, and as of now, they cannot be recycled more than a few times without loss in mechanical quality (Pathak, Hinge, & Otzen, 2023). The use of some virgin materials during recycling is inevitable. Complexities related to polymer mixes and additives mean that in the absence of regulation to streamline plastic production and delimit plastic additives, this situation is unlikely to change soon, even with innovations in recycling technology (Pathak, Hinge, & Otzen, 2023). Moreover, the economic feasibility of recycling is tied to, and can be undermined by, fluctuations in the price of oil: Low oil prices render virgin plastic production more attractive than recycling (see Stromberg, 2004). Nevertheless, Saskia and Gauri constantly heard of people dutifully washing old plastic cartons and multilayer packaging for recycling. Conversations in Denmark revealed that most people were unaware of these technological challenges and believed that their wastes, when appropriately segregated, were being recycled. At a discussion in Denmark, when Gauri mentioned the realities of municipal waste recycling, a participant exclaimed that people could not be made aware of the situation, lest they stop bothering to sort their waste altogether. The rolling out of such segregated recycling stations, then, is a technology of patience that disciplines citizens into new forms of conduct while suggesting that recycling technologies exist or are being refined to solve the plastic problem.

Technologies of patience, such as circular economy frameworks, suggest that the present moment is a ‘sink’ (Gabrys, 2009) and that wastes, toxicity, and harm are to be held suspended at this moment until an anticipated future that will remediate them. They encourage the conditioning of subjects in the present in anticipation of a future technological fix, which is projected to ultimately resolve the problem. These technologies are celebrated in the present moment without acknowledging the scale of the need for new sociotechnical systems and without commensurate action toward constructing them.

Technologies of Deflection

If technologies of patience ask for fortitude in the present premised upon a better future, what we term ‘technologies of deflection’ suggest that the present moment is already a sustainable one. Unlike technologies of patience, technologies of deflection do not acknowledge the need for large-scale changes. Affectively, these technologies function as a form of gaslighting, minimizing the scale of the problem and encouraging a denial crucial to the continuation of the status quo. They embed the claim that the conditions for a sustainable future already exist in the present and that their enactment only requires self-policing and responsibility from individuals and compliance from populations.

Recycling is one such technology. ‘Don’t worry; this can be recycled’ an interlocutor in Singapore told Gauri, pointing to the small multilayer plastic packaging enclosing a single-use (plastic) wipe at dinner. During a visiting appointment at the School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, she came across clinicians concerned about sustainable medicine who were advocating recycling initiatives within their institutions. When Gauri shared details regarding the disappointing realities of recycling, the reaction was usually one of surprise. One clinician who was involved with propagating sustainable medicine was explicit: ‘People don’t know this, even in the sustainability world!’

Similar interventions include the use of plastic waste for road construction, which Mark and Gauri have been asked about in both India and Singapore. This type of road construction has received a lot of media and policy—and hence, public—attention in India (e.g., Pathak & Nichter, 2021). However, it is not possible for roads to absorb all the plastic waste generated, and they still represent significant end-of-life issues. At the time of writing this, longitudinal environmental assessments related to the toxicity of the chemicals, MNPs, and leachate that these roads will release are lacking. The false promise of road construction using up all the plastic waste generated in effect paves the way for further fossil fuel extraction and plastic consumption.

Here, we would like to differentiate between circular economy initiatives as technologies of patience and the perpetuation of myths about recycling as technologies of deflection, even as we note that there are significant overlaps between the two. Circular economy initiatives such as the one we have described in Denmark, while requiring citizens to learn certain behaviors (such as household waste segregation), accept the need for change in the status quo and push for changes in policies for the mandated use of recycled materials, extended producer responsibility (which places responsibility for post-consumer waste on the manufacturers of the consumer goods resulting in those wastes), and redesign for reuse and recycling, however limited or aspirational. As technologies of deflection, however, corporate social responsibility messaging or public relations campaigns that focus on recycling as success stories suggest that once the public stops littering and starts recycling, the problem will be solved—the technology exists, but unruly people are the problem. The distinctions between these two technologies are local and situated, as the perceptions of these new technologies depend upon lived experiences and are informed by media narratives and advertising, along with, but not limited to, visible changes in infrastructure (such as seeing highly segregated waste sorting facilities). During the writing of this article, it became evident that discussions around how to classify particular technologies were informed by our own specific experiences of living and travelling in India and other parts of Asia, the United States, Australia, and northern and southern Europe. Regional differences meant that new technologies were understood in different ways, as these were being introduced, discussed, and interpreted in ways that reflected unique infrastructural challenges and capacities.

Writing about issues in waste advocacy, Liboiron (2014) points out the naturalization, in public discourses, of proposed solutions that often occur at a scale that is different from the scale of the problem—a phenomenon termed scale-fixing in human-geography. They give the example of lists such as ‘10 small things you can do to save the planet’, which suggest action at the scale of the individual when the problem is often occurring at an industrial scale. These kinds of scalar mismatches are integral to technologies of deflection, and examining for scalar mismatches throws up other examples, such as those of token gestures or performative policies (see also Pathak & Nichter, 2019).

The possibilities of such promissory technologies can exceed the capabilities of existing infrastructures. Bioplastics are an exemplar. The very term bioplastic is appealing because it connotes an earth-friendly alternative to synthetic plastics. Bioplastics are promoted as a problem-free, eco-friendly alternative to synthetic plastics. At an organic grocery store in Italy, Saskia declined a bag offered by a staff member to carry her vegetables. The shop assistant, working at a place which prides itself on its green identity, insisted that the bags at the store need not be refused—as bioplastic bags were made of natural materials, there was no cause for concern. When sorting his trash into various bins, Mark asked a US householder who sorts his trash for recycling where bioplastics should go—plastic recycling, compostable waste, or general trash. The interlocutor’s response echoed a common (mis)perception: He assumed that bioplastic bags would easily break down, whether in a landfill (incorrectly, as landfills are anaerobic environments) or in a compost pile. When it came to thicker plastics, Mark’s interlocutor admitted that he wasn’t sure about the differences between the various types and believed it was better to place all thick plastic items in the same recycling bin, a behavior also noted by other researchers (e.g., Ansink et al., 2022).

While many consumers remain unaware of bio-based plastic products (Ruf et al., 2022), those who are aware generally view bioplastics positively (Filho et al., 2022). However, terms like ‘bio-based’ and ‘biodegradable’ are applied to a wide range of materials, often with little public disclosure about critical differences in their composition and the degree to which they are biodegradable. In theory, biodegradable plastics would be those produced from natural substances such as starch that are capable of breaking down without leaving toxic byproducts (Zhu & Wang, 2020). Yet many plastics sold as ‘bioplastics’ do not meet these criteria (Lavagnolo et al., 2024) and contain chemical additives that are as toxic as those found in conventional plastics (Zimmermann et al., 2020). Notably, the term ‘bioplastics’ does not have a standardized definition, is not strictly regulated, and is often used loosely to refer to plastics that are somewhat bio-based (i.e., made from non-fossil fuel materials, usually agricultural wastes), biodegradable, or compostable (Silva et al., 2024). The term has even been applied to plastics which are up to 80% fossil fuel based (Beyond Plastics, n.d.).

The extent and speed of biodegradation depend not only on the composition of a bioplastic item—specifically, the polymer’s chemical structure and stabilizing additives—but also on environmental factors such as sunlight, heat, humidity, and the molecular interactions that influence microbial anaerobic digestion (e.g., Rosenboom et al., 2022). Under some ambient environmental conditions, the process of biodegradation may take extended periods of time. Studies have shown, for example, the minimal biodegradation of some types of bioplastics that were submerged in seawater for 180 days (Nazareth et al., 2019).

Consumers often misinterpret the term ‘compostable’, believing it means that a material will decompose quickly regardless of where it is discarded. However, many products labeled ‘compostable’ can only break down under controlled conditions in industrial composters that maintain high temperatures (Meeks et al., 2015). This important detail can be buried in the fine print on packaging (or entirely absent from it), and when it is read, consumers tend to dispose of the item in the trash or recycling bins given the scarcity of industrial composting facilities. When bioplastics degrade outside controlled environments, the process is often incomplete, leaving behind residues. Partially degraded bioplastics can disintegrate into MNPs (Piyathilake et al., 2024; Tao et al., 2024), which are far more difficult to remove from the environment than larger, visible plastic debris. In a recent study, Ding et al. (2021) demonstrated that there appears to be no distinction between the ways that microplastics produced by ‘biodegradable’ plastics or conventional plastics detrimentally affect earthworm populations. Instead, what matters to the viability of earthworms is the volume of microplastics in the soil. There are also challenges related to bioplastic recycling; bioplastics cannot be recycled together with conventional plastics without polluting the recyclable plastic stream (Staplevan et al., 2024). Specific waste sorting is required to keep the waste streams for these plastics separate; this requires additional time, labor, and knowledge (Ansink et al., 2022; Taufik et al., 2020).

Bioplastics, in particular, highlight the overlap between the technologies we are outlining in this paper, especially those of patience and deflection. Visible changes, such as the proliferation (or not) of ‘bioplastic’ carrier bags can mark the difference in perception between a technology that has putatively been developed elsewhere but is yet to reach local shores (a technology of patience) and a technology that has already arrived (a technology of deflection). These technologies can also reinforce and amplify one another, functioning as multiple technologies in a single context: constituting a solution that is waiting to be further developed for a diversity of applications (technology of patience) as well as a solution that is already here (technology of deflection).

One of the most common responses that Saskia gets when she mentions her interest in plastics relates to charismatic recycling projects. These projects often claim to tackle the problem of plastics in marine environments, which, for many people in Europe and Australia with whom Saskia has spoken, is one of the key ways that plastic pollution is framed. Many people express optimism regarding projects such as the Ocean Cleanup project founded by Dutch then-teenager Boyan Slat and products (such as clothing and trainers) putatively made from plastics removed from the ocean. Although projects such as the Ocean Cleanup have noted the Promethean difficulties inherent in removing plastics from marine environments, the persistent idea that specially equipped boats are collecting marine plastics creates specific ways of thinking about plastic pollution.

These charismatic clean-up and recycling projects encourage two misperceptions of plastic pollution and therefore how to tackle the problem. First, they portray the problem of plastics as being primarily about large pieces of waste that can be removed from the environments in which they are found, such as the ocean, encouraging the misperception that marine plastic pollution is a macroplastic problem revolving around choking hazards and entanglement. While there are large pieces and fragments of plastics in the ocean that threaten marine fauna in these ways, the smaller plastic particles that dominate the problem in the ocean pose persistent risks to marine life, not least by transporting pathogens, toxins, and toxicants into the bodies of animals who eat them (Yose et al., 2023). The ways that plastics degrade and break apart to form smaller particles is a major component of plastic pollution problems on land, in the air, and in bodies of water. This is elided in the ‘plastic pollution as large litter’ impressions communicated by the narratives encoded in these charismatic projects. These narratives obscure how plastics can pollute as small particles, whether from tires on roads, the washing of synthetic clothing, the open burning of mixed wastes, or during extraction and use (Abrahms-Kavunenko, 2023, 2025; Latkar & Pathak, 2024). Secondly, these projects encourage the misunderstanding that large pieces of plastics, when removed, can be easily turned into something new, ignoring the material difficulties and expense involved in removing, cleaning, identifying, and recycling plastics from the sea.

In the cases above, technologies of deflection undermine calls for radically decreasing or regulating the production of plastics by offering people the sense that the problem has already been solved. Technologies of deflection imply that somebody has already worked on an effective technological solution and that these solutions are already available. In making these claims, promissory technologies encourage the sense that very little needs to be changed in order for the problems associated with plastics to be overcome; these technologies do not demand new subjectivities, disciplinary practices, or regulatory regimes. After all, they imply, plastics can be generated from problem-free sources and readily recycled. As such, technologies of deflection undermine other kinds of actions and activism on both small or large scales, whether the simple action of reducing consumption or the collective fight for transformative policy changes. These technologies enable the perpetuation of the political economic status quo while still allowing for a sense that something is being done to work toward sustainability.

Technologies of Salvation

Sitting on a long train ride to Denmark to attend a workshop on plastics, Saskia was asked what she does by a fellow passenger, Lars. Lars explained that he was working in the renewable energy sector and was simultaneously hopeful and crestfallen about the possibilities of addressing the climate crisis. ‘I thought six years ago’, he told her, ‘that everyone was going to realize what was wrong and start making changes.… They don’t seem to want to change’, he sighed. When Saskia mentioned her interest in plastics, Lars’s first response was this: The problem of plastic pollution is enormous and something must be urgently done. During the journey, Lars asked about the possibilities of ocean clean-ups and plastic bans on straws and discussed a small-scale charismatic recycling project using plastics that the company claims are collected from the ocean. After Saskia fielded these questions, pointing out the limitations of each, the last thing that came up was this: ‘What about plastic-eating microbes?’

After the 2016 scientific report of a bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis, that could degrade polyethylene terephthalate (PET, a type of plastic) (Yoshida et al., 2016), the proposition that microbial life can solve the plastic pollution crisis has captured headlines around the world. Since then, there have been many discoveries of other microbes—usually bacteria, bacterial colonies, or fungi—that can degrade PET or other kinds of plastics (e.g., Branson et al., 2023; Fernández et al., 2022; Kumar A et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2021). In news sources such as The Guardian, such bacteria were initially met with cautious optimism; one headline asked, ‘Could a new plastic-eating bacteria help combat this pollution scourge?’ (Mathiesen, 2016). Recent headlines are more enthusiastic: ‘“We are just getting started”: The plastic eating bacteria that could change the world’ (Buranyi, 2023). The Guardian is not alone in its optimistic tone, with many news agencies based outside of Europe touting similar claims. An article by The Washington Post in 2023 mentions a worm whose microbiome degrades a type of plastic, exclaiming: ‘This plastic-foam eating “superworm” could help solve the garbage crisis’ (Verma, 2022). In India, the tone of media reporting on new forms of plastic-eating organisms has been similarly optimistic, with some outlets proclaiming that these bacteria could be ‘eco-friendly alternative clean-up methods for plastic waste worldwide’ (Mullick, 2019) or, even more strongly, a ‘panacea’ to the plastic crisis (Raman, 2023).

Leaving aside the concerns of the 1972 science fiction novel, Mutant 59, where a plastic-eating bacterium causes chaos in London by degrading the city’s plastics, the possibilities of a voracious organism that has evolved to munch away on the world’s plastic wastes represents a third kind of promissory technology, one we term a ‘technology of salvation’. Rather than relying upon the techno-utopic interventions of human ingenuity, it rests on planet Earth’s own capacities. Here the Earth, either imagined as a Gaia-like whole or as a mass of interacting evolving entities, offers not a techno-utopic but a cosmological salvation. Humans in this narrative may appear as shepherding or channeling the ingenuity of ‘Nature’, but they are not responsible for the intervention. Rather, the Earth as an entity, through the miracle of evolution, can solve the concatenating crises which mark the current era.

Academia has experienced a renewed interest in the role of microorganisms in the unfolding and enabling of life on the planet, with what has been termed the ‘microbial moment’ (Paxson & Helmreich, 2014) or the ‘microbial turn’ (Brives et al., 2021; Lorimer, 2020). In popular narratives relating microbes and fungi to plastics, these organisms are not only a physical answer to the global plastic problem but also have soteriological resonance. This implication builds on previous popular science (and indeed psychedelia, such as Mckenna, 1994) that has presented fungi (Sheldrake, 2020; Stamets, 2005) and microbes (Yong, 2016) as key to evolutionary processes. Implied in these seemingly secular narratives is the idea that answers to humanity’s problems are contained within the Earth’s ecosystems. People just need to get out of the way. These ideas tend to obfuscate the laboratory and industry-based settings in which these new scientific discoveries are being applied.

In 2024, after having discussions with Gauri about the limitations of plastic bioremediation through microbes in Denmark, Saskia spoke with an Australian friend about the possibilities of using microbes to digest plastics. Saskia’s friend was disappointed to learn that the bacteria and fungi in question cannot completely break down all plastics and plastic-related toxicants in ordinary environments. Instead, research is now largely focused on enzymes extracted from these microbial sources, which can then be used to break down specific forms of pre-segregated plastics in highly controlled laboratory or industrial settings (Pathak, Hinge, & Otzen, 2023). Contrary to an imagined future in which plastic-eating microbes could be simply sprinkled onto plastic wastes, whether on land or in waterways, the realities of the biological degradation (and therefore recycling) of plastics will more likely involve highly controlled acellular environments where pre-treated, homogenous polymer streams will be broken down in bioreactors in a multi-step process. The biological degradation of plastics, in short, will face the same waste collection and management challenges that plague other forms of recycling, including the fact that two billion people across the globe lack access to municipal waste collection services.

In uncontrolled settings, plastics present unique challenges to microbial degradation: Not all polymer types can be immediately decomposed by microbes (they may need to be pre-treated). Some microbes will only degrade certain polymers, requiring a microbial mix that may not sustain itself in varied plastic environments. Additives vary widely across plastics and not all will be adequately degraded. By-products of the degradation of certain polymers, such as polyvinyl chloride, can be toxic, stunting the biological activity of the very microbes doing the degrading. The pace of degradation is likely to be very slow. Also, the biological degradation of plastics does not always contribute to biomass growth, implying that given an environment with alternatives, plastics will not be the preferred sources of food for most of these organisms (Pathak, Hinge, & Otzen, 2023). While the work of scientists in this area is promising, none are suggesting that bioremediation or biological recycling would result in the complete disappearance of plastics in the ways depicted in Mutant 59.

This last category of technologies, which contains within it the idea of the planet saving humanity from human-created problems, is qualitatively distinctive from the other two categories. Unlike technologies of patience and technologies of deflection, technologies of salvation, rather than relying on human ingenuity and technology to fix global problems, seem to suggest the acquiescence of human will to a more powerful entity. By eliding the scientists, lab technicians, and laboratories involved in extracting microbial life and the controlled industrial environments in which bioremediation or biological recycling will have to occur, optimistic media narratives can conceal the waste-management infrastructures, investment, and research environments necessary to successfully harness such discoveries. These narratives flatten chronic waste, litter, and pollution problems by assuming that all plastics are ontologically the same. Often presented as ‘good news’ media stories, technologies of salvation provide a misplaced sense of hope that the Earth can not only cleanse the planet of plastics and other anthropogenic toxicants, but also provide solutions for broader concatenating anthropogenic environmental crises.

In an analysis of discourses relating to plastic pollution and plastic control, Pathak and Nichter (2021) proposed the term ‘ecocommunicability’ to identify the complex phenomenon whereby communication related to the environment functions as a biopolitical tool for disciplining and orienting subjects. In the contemporary attention economy, fast-breaking news coverage of technological innovations is often sensationalistic and typically focuses on small-scale solutions, discoveries, and ‘breakthroughs’ that constitute either initial steps in complex processes or simply novel irrelevancies, alongside vague promises. Optimistic portrayals of these promissory technologies are appealing because they offer the possibility of undisrupted, livable futures without requiring major lifestyle changes from consumers and citizens or politically and economically disruptive action from policymakers and plastic stakeholders.

Conclusion

In Cruel Optimism, Berlant (2020a) describes how contemporary people are bound to a unique kind of temporality, one in which an idealized future—and expectations about the infrastructures necessary to achieve it—undercuts and disconnects people from the acknowledgement of the present. The ways that people live in and respond to current ecological crises reflect and are interconnected with the kinds of disconnections and imagined temporalities that Berlant so eloquently describes. In extending their framework of ‘technologies of patience’ to discuss the problems posed by unfettered plastic production, consumption, and inadequate disposal, we suggest three kinds of technologies that work in concert and synergistically to maintain a ‘business as usual’ approach to unfolding ecological catastrophes. In the technologies outlined above, new forms of temporality are offered to the despondent subject who is concerned by the seemingly insurmountable crises of the current epoch. Each suggests a continuity with a future that has resisted large-scale political economic changes, excepting improvements in technology itself. In the first, ‘technologies of patience’, the future is a techno-utopic imagining about to unfold. The well-trained and conditioned subject, who has already been virtuously separating waste and consuming the ‘right kinds’ of goods, is promised a future that will usher in improved infrastructures that eternally recycle and renew, without the need for radical changes in consumption or lifestyle patterns. In the second (our first addition to Berlant’s schema), ‘technologies of deflection’, the future is made possible by a present which has already solved all crises. This miraculous present can occur in places unseen, such as definitive ocean clean-ups or product possibilities closer to home, such as bioplastics. Our next addition, ‘technologies of salvation’, is categorically distinctive from the first two. It signals a future made possible by imagined planetary processes that ameliorate humanity’s incapacities to provide a technological fix. In technologies of salvation, human agency need not be present at all, unless it is imagined as shepherding the ingenuity present within the planet’s self-adaptive resilience to withstand and transform anything that polluters can create, this despite mounting and ever-more alarming scientific findings that clearly suggest the contrary. Within this third category, the temporality implied is of a future which corrects humanity’s waywardness (in most monotheistic framings) or degeneration (within many forms of Hindu, Buddhist, and contemporary pantheist perspectives) through the self-caring capacities of planet Earth.

It is at this point in articles about ecological crises that writers often tell the reader that the problems outlined can be at least partially addressed with a technological, policy, or conceptual shift. Whilst the idea of ending on an uplifting note is tempting, we, as the authors, feel that this kind of signaling would itself constitute a promissory technology. Perhaps it is better to sit with and refuse our own tendencies to seek shelter from distress in a promissory future, albeit in academic form. To avoid encouraging any new form of cruel optimism, we will resist this impulse. Instead, we suggest bearing witness to the ways that these patterns and strategies render other futures impossible, as they condition subjecthood in ways which dampen uncomfortable psychological responses and forestall necessary social and political action.