Edinburgh Napier University

  One severe and urgent environmental problem facing this planet is ocean plastic pollution. Despite various policies and frameworks, the challenge has been growing as countless plastics enter the marine environment and remain there for hundreds of thousands of years, endangering the health of the ecosystems. As a material with excellent properties recyclability, ocean plastics have the potential to be recalled back to the production process for repurposing into a new life cycle. Citizens need to be provided with a new vision to rethink their relationship with ocean plastic to meet this challenge.
This practice-based thesis aims to combine design and technical skills and sociological enquiry (an integration of participatory research, case studies and interviews) to explore the relationship between ocean plastic and society by investigating its impact, potential and public perceptions. Adopting a quantitative approach, the author added her design vision in the traditional scientific process, experimenting with four types of plastic waste collected from beaches in Scotland, including polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and then developed systematic methods of recycling ocean plastics. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, the author examined public views of ocean plastic as pollution and as potential material resources in different settings, where participants were able to acquire knowledge and information about ocean plastic and interact with the recycling and making process. Findings suggest ocean plastics can be repurposed through both traditional and emerging processing methods and can be adopted in a variety of applications, except for products requiring precision due to contaminants and unknown degradation. The research also identifies public interest in reusing ocean plastic and willingness to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours towards plastic use. The study raises new implications for ocean plastic research and agendas for further research investigating the relationship between participation, emotion and behaviour change.