Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/3325
Date of Award
6-2026
Degree Name
MS in Environmental Sciences and Management
Department/Program
Natural Resources Management
College
College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences
Advisor
Nicholas Williams
Advisor Department
Natural Resources Management
Advisor College
College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences
Abstract
Agricultural plastic waste (APW) accounts for a significant and growing share of global plastic pollution, yet no study has documented how APW management functions across a specific crop system from production through end-of-life (EOL). This thesis addresses that gap by examining the structures and valuations that shape current EOL management of plastic mulch (PM) and drip tape (DT) in California's strawberry industry, one of the nation's most plastic-dependent crop systems. Drawing on an ethnographic approach that included 27 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, as well as site visits, this study traces how APW is produced, valued, and discarded within a structurally fragmented system. Grounded in discard studies and waste valuation theory, the analysis is organized around three intersecting dimensions: social perceptions, material realities, and economic and institutional structures. Findings reveal that EOL outcomes are not primarily the result of technological limitations or stakeholder indifference but are produced by interlocking structural forces — artificially cheap virgin resin, logistical geography that favors export over domestic processing, regulatory frameworks that paradoxically obstruct recycling infrastructure, and volatile end markets — that make landfilling, stockpiling, and export the path of least resistance season after season. Most significantly, this study identifies accumulated industry distrust and misinformation as undertheorized structural variables that function not as perception problems but as barriers. These findings reframe APW not as a waste management failure but as a production policy failure, and point toward the need for upstream intervention.