General part: Human geographers are concerned with the “who”, “what”, “where”, “why”, “when”, and “how” of humans their interrelationships and their relationship to the environment.
The central concern of the course is the analysis of the relationship between society, place and space. It focuses on social, economic, political, cultural and human-environment processes and patterns and how they change over space and time. This critical viewpoint is of crucial importance in the generation of a broad and informed understanding of the world.
Focus:
Waste in general and marine waste in particular with insights on the beach litter and plastic pollution.
Society’s adoption of plastics as a substitute for traditional materials has expanded almost exponentially since the 1950s, when large-scale plastic production began. Durability is a common feature of most plastics, and it is this property, combined with an inability to manage end-of-life plastic effectively that has resulted in marine plastics and microplastics becoming a global problem. As for many pollutants, plastic waste is a trans-boundary, complex, social, economic and environmental problem with few easy solutions.
It is only in the past decade that the scale and importance of the problem has received due attention.
The aims of this course will underline: the state of our knowledge on sources, fate and effects of marine plastics and microplastics, approaches and potential solutions to address this multifaceted problem.