Book Review Essay: The Waste of the World
Writing almost 20 years ago, Nicky Gregson and her research partners claimed that “…(W)aste’s capacity as a theoretical vehicle is immense; like food it is good to think…
Author: Josh Lepawsky
Book Review Essay: The Waste of the World
Writing almost 20 years ago, Nicky Gregson and her research partners claimed that “…(W)aste’s capacity as a theoretical vehicle is immense; like food it is good to think…
Reading Lists: Residential Schools and Canadian Colonialism
Content warning: this article covers topics of colonialism and genocide in Canada. In early June of 2021 news reports emerged about the remains of Indigenous children buried in…
No insides on the outsides
“The main goal and mission of a content moderator is to clean up the dirt.” — unnamed content moderator in The Cleaners (00:06:20). All systems must rid themselves…
PSA: Beware of Easy Narratives
This is a Twitter essay by Josh Lepawsky (@rubbishmaker) about one of many recent examples of reporting on the e-waste trade. Many of the problems specific to the…
Mapping USA electronics manufacturing pollution
The US ‘tech sector’ has been a major source of toxicant releases. These interactive maps show the chemical legacy of electronic manufacturing in the US.
Reorganized Organ: youth mentorship project
Are you an artist, musician, hacker, tinkerer, or generally a curious person, between 18 and 24 years?
Repair-scapes
How might thinking through repair in terms of space change how we think about – and practice – repair? In what follows, we describe four cases from our…
Precision is not accuracy.
We often use the words precision and accuracy interchangeably in everyday conversation, but in statistics they mean different things.
Article Alert! Redefining pollution and action: The matter of plastics
From the specific case of marine plastics, Liboiron’s paper offers a more general point that those of us who study discards need to remember to take seriously: How…
Trading on distortion
The lead researcher on a seminal work mapping the international traffic of e-waste responds to criticism of his research on material flows.
Bigger, Better, Faster, More? Breaking the taboo of production.
The Taboo of Production The conversation of about electronic waste (e-waste) almost without exception, focuses exclusively on what happens after consumers discard their electronics. Framing the conver…