@article{7b40fd74-6cd3-4a66-8b2d-294e5bcf5d3b,
  abstract     = {{This article examines how grassroots and community-led initiatives engage in prefigurative politics, understood as building alternative futures in the present, in response to the global plastic crisis. Engaging with work on sustainable materialism and alternative organising, we introduce the concept of prefigurative plastic politics to capture how initiatives rework material and economic relations around plastics through spatially plural practices. Drawing on a global mapping of 125 initiatives and 45 interviews, we develop an empirically grounded typology of how these actors intervene across the domains of production, use, discard, and governance. Our analysis identifies four dynamics through which these initiatives operate: reworking material relations, relocalising economic activity, organising differently, and developing diverse approaches to scaling. These findings position prefigurative plastic politics as an important but overlooked dimension of contemporary plastics governance, and show how such initiatives expand what counts as political action in the global plastic economy.}},
  author       = {{Chertkovskaya, Ekaterina and Hasselbalch, Jacob and Stripple, Johannes and Auty, Leon and Gäbken, Johanna and Visser, Vera Norien}},
  issn         = {{2589-8116}},
  keywords     = {{prefigurative politics; Alternative organising; plastics; Environmental governance; scaling; Sustainable materialism}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Earth System Governance}},
  title        = {{Prefigurative plastic politics : Alternative organising in the global plastic economy}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2026.100347}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.esg.2026.100347}},
  volume       = {{29}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}