Welcome to The Plastic Sea
From tourist resort to golf course, past cultivated meadows and farmland, the plastic sea suddenly appears. You blink for a moment—white plastic glistens in the sun, reflecting light in every direction. The plastic sea is bordered by the real sea and dotted with houses, rocks, and villages. This is Europe's vegetable garden, where sunlight and a little water are used to supply the continent with food. And also with pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, bumblebees, bees, hoverflies, pest-repelling plants, and everything else modern agriculture—striving for uniform, top-grade produce—believes it needs.
Farmers speed through narrow streets in large pickups, while black Africans, standing upright on electric scooters, glide past—working here or looking for work. A lost tourist camper in search of a beach, a slogan on a wall protesting racism, an election poster for the far right. Plastic waste is all around. No one seems to notice it, pause for a moment, or try to pull it from the bushes, trees, or traffic signs. Plastic has become the symptom of a world in crisis, in the rat race to the lowest prices on supermarket shelves and the carelessness of our economic system that serves only convenience and branding—while keeping the backstage of labor and pollution carefully hidden. Plastic waste crystallizes until even the oxygen in the plastic sea seems to be replaced by microplastics. Here, you breathe plastic, bird nests are built from plastic, and downstream, fish and dolphins wash ashore with stomachs full of plastic.
Work in progress.
The mayor of a Ghanaian migrant shantytownPlastic waste at illegal dump
Publication - due for November ‘25Publication - due for November ‘25
“We haven't enough water, but they are still building new greenhouses. They cannot manage all the plastic waste, but we build new greenhouses. They don't want more immigrants here, but they build new greenhouses.”
Umberto Zanesi, activist
Wordt Vervolgd Magazine, 2025 Volkskrant Magazine, 2025