After fully exploring representing the problem of plastic pollution, using symbolic studio techniques, I next wanted to move on to showing this issue in a documentary style. As I mentioned in my plastic studio planning, I am aiming explore this topic from a photo-journalistic point of view, showing plastics effect on our island. Because plastic is used for near enough everything these days I have chosen to pin point my work to one specific plastic pollution type. Below I have made a list and contact sheet depicting a number of plastic pollution topics I could look into for my next shoot…When thinking about our island and the ways in which I could capture all of these subjects that I have listed above, one topic for me really stood out. Because I will be looking at a mixture of pollution materials when documenting things such as beaches and landfills later in my project. Subjects like plastic packaging, grocery bags, fishing plastic and micro-plastics are all things I can show together where they are found. So in conclusion I will be concentrating on agricultural plastic waste because it is so common to see on our islands as well as being a massive contributor to global plastic waste.

The reason ‘plasticulture’ is so prominent in Jersey is because of our famous Jersey Royal potatoes. Our export of this crop accounts for around 70% of agricultural turnover, 99% of which is shipped to the United Kingdom. The term plasticulture refers to the practice of using plastic materials in agricultural applications. Unfortunately this method is used for Jersey’s potatoes to produce earlier harvesting, improved quality and larger marketable yields. Polyethylene is the plastic film used by the majority of growers because of its affordability, flexibility and easy manufacturing. I think this topic is a fantastic example of plastic pollution on our island because of huge amount of this material spread over large areas (representing our problem with over using this material in every sense). Polyethylene is the most common plastic, we produce around 80 million tonnes per year, its primary use is in packaging (plastic bags, plastic films, containers including bottles, etc.). Agricultural films are one of the largest contributors to the billions of pounds of plastics that are discarded by farms across the globe each year.

To record this problem, using straight photography techniques, I will have to travel around the rural areas of Jersey looking for examples of ‘plasticulture’ and the waste it leaves behind. To do this I will begin by simply walking around the fields in St Martin and Gorey, as I have already spotted quite a few examples in my day-to-day travels. All I will need to complete this shoot is my camera and natural light from the sun, it will be interesting to see how much of this plastic waste I can find (supporting my point of this being a massive plastic pollution issue). My goal for this shoot is to dive into documentary photography and explore the truth about my chosen topic in-depth without manipulation. When researching this farming technique for images to inspire me, I was very surprised to find that there where hardly any examples of using plastic the way Jersey farmers do. The images below show narrow lines of plastic spread out across fields whereas, from what I have seen on the island so far, we truly cover our fields from top to bottom in this lightweight plastic film.