What happens when a material continues beyond its intended life?

Plastic Afterlife investigates how plastic moves through Scotland’s coastal environments and becomes incorporated into seabird nesting systems.

Through field observation, material collection, pathway mapping, and speculative design, the project traces plastic flows across selected coastal sites and examines how seabirds encounter, incorporate, and redistribute synthetic materials.

These findings are translated into material passports, availability maps, and speculative future scenarios that reveal emerging material relationships, identify where harmful pathways might be redirected, and explore more careful forms of coexistence between humans, seabirds, and coastal environments.

Supervisor: Dr Gruffudd Hill