Metabolic Rifts and Modernity: Single-Use Plastics, Composting Logics, and the Remaking of Urban Foodways in Yaounde

Abstract

Single-use Plastics have become undeniably the most adopted packaging option in Yaounde’s urban foodways because they represent modernity. This paper diagnoses a paradox. A paradox festering within Yaounde’s shiny, plastic embrace. Through a medical anthropological lens, I analyse this single-use reality. I frame the plastic bag, bottle, Styrofoam box as potent biocultural objects. Objects that are actively reshaping perceptions with regards to hygiene, reshaping the society as a whole. My qualitative data from 88 households across the city’s seven subdivisions reveals a powerful valorisation. Plastics symbolize urban modernity, a perceived hygiene, yet they simultaneously corrode the traditional food-sharing rituals and generate new forms of perpetual waste creating public health anxiety.

This linear logic co-exists with another logic, an older and persistent marginalised practice of circular composting. This indigenous composting, systematically frames as a “backward” or “primitive” purely rural practice. This devalued framing is what crystalizes the metabolic rift in the socio-ecological fabric of the city. A rupture where competing cultural logics of disposal fractures the urban ecology. This work posits the stark co-existence. Therefore, effective policy must bridge this rift. It must move beyond the failing paradigm of surface-level solutions. It must consider indigenous knowledge of circularity, a path that is culturally resonant and offers sustainable solutions to heal the rift.

Keywords: Medical Anthropology, Single-Use Plastics, Metabolic Rift, Urban Food Systems, Composting, Cameroon, Biocultural Objects, Waste Governance.

Received Date: June 19, 2026

Accepted Date: July 10, 2026

Published Date: August 01, 2026

Available Online at: https://www.ijsrisjournal.com/index.php/ojsfiles/article/view/908