The Plastiglomerates of Hawai'i: Mongrels of Our Making

By Michael Kolster

Hawai'i's "Big Island" is a place created by fire, being formed entirely from volcanic activity and currently home to four active volcanoes. The Big Island is also, due to its position relative to the North Pacific trash gyre, home to large amounts of plastic debris that the ocean deposits on its shores, particularly on its remote southwestern areas such as Kamilo Beach. Much effort has been made to remove this debris, with a fair amount of success over the years, but the flow of trash onto the beaches continues unabated and makes keeping these beaches clean a never-ending task. And the question arises: Does clearing the beaches of plastic waste, only to bury it elsewhere, actually help? Or does its removal make people less aware of the problem, since out of sight is out of mind?

Photographer Michael Kolster became interested in the issue of plastic debris on Kamilo Beach through a paper from the Geological Society of America whose authors claimed that the plastic debris, when melted or otherwise combined with rocks on the beach, would become a horizon marker for the Anthropocene--that is, modern-day fossils that will document present-day humans' presence on Earth millions of years from now. Dubbed "plastiglomerates" by geologists, these hybrid "stones" are the product of humans burning plastic, whether intentionally or accidentally, that then melts and become fused with the naturally-occurring rocks that were created by volcanoes. These fusions of human and geological activity are likely to persist for thousands of millennia due to their prevalence, location, and composition. They form a record of the presence of present-day humans that will last long after we are gone, far into the unforeseeable future.

Wanting to see these plastiglomerates for himself, Kolster traveled to Hawai'i, where he photographed Kamilo Beach and its plastiglomerates. He also collected examples of plastiglomerates that he took back to his home in Maine. Kolster's photographs of the plastiglomerates, both in Hawai'i and collected in his studio, show both the harsh reality and surprising beauty of plastic trash from the beaches of a Pacific paradise. While this trash can be viewed as both an eyesore and an insult to our ideas of what a tropical paradise should be like, Kolster also shows how seeing plastic on the beach is equivalent to looking in the mirror: We need to look closer at our reflection before impulsively wiping it clean, only to have to do it over and over day after day, week after week, endlessly.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1960521098
• ISBN13: 9781960521095
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: George F Thompson Publishing
• Length: 216 Pages