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…
Tag: Recycling
House construction: Samira the Snail needs your help!
by Jo Püst – This is the story of Samira the Snail. Together with various other animals and plants, she lives in a small village near the forest.…
Sorting It Out: Sustainability in Higher Education
by Kathy Zhang In May of 2021, I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a combined degree in Environmental and Sustainability Studies and Art. I…
Waste and Recycling in Cold War Eastern Europe
This short study analyzes the professional and political discussions of post-industrial and post-consumer waste, discards and recycling in state-socialist Hungary and connects these discourses with th…
On Wishcycling
Wishcycling is the process of placing discards into the recycling bin even when there’s little to no chance for their recovery. The term entered common use over the…
Agbogbloshie: Dumping no more
Agbogbloshie is a part of an emergent globalised scrap economy that links peripheral markets to global metal flows. In this post, Dagna Rams argues for the need to…
Myths of the Circular Economy
Discard studies spoke with three leading waste researchers about the biggest myths of the circular economy.
Does recycling actually conserve or preserve things?
By Samantha MacBride There are a series of assumptions behind the familiar assertion that recycling saves resources and energy, and in so doing, protects the environment. These assumptions…
What the world misses about recycling
Recycling was never just a solution to a disposal crisis, and it did not uniformly reduce total waste management costs. Rather, it addresses a range of other concerns…
Why Is This Trash Can Yelling at Me? Big Bellies and Clean Green Gentrification
“Pssst. There’s something really special happening here. I’m collecting five times more trash than the other guys and using solar energy to compact it all. Welcome to downtown…
Resources for Observing and Understanding America Recycles Day
Wednesday is America Recycles Day. It’s a day that reveals the complex history of industry, consumer, and social attitudes towards the environment.
Moving the Circular Economy Beyond Alchemy
This review of a special issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology titled, “Exploring the Circular Economy” is a virtual tour of circular economy definitions and current directions.…
Examining Waste as an Economic Externality
In an economic sense, it is usually municipal and state governments that account for the cost of damage waste causes to local environments when deciding how to deal…
Eco Messe
Ökologie und Mode – passt das überhaupt zusammen? Teil 2 Eine wirkliche Alternative zu der üblichen Wegwerfmode, ein schöner Gedanke. Die Arbeitsbedingungen und Produktionsdetails bekannter Kett…
Eco-Fashion
Ökologie und Mode – passt das überhaupt zusammen? Teil 1 Ökologisch und fair produzierte Mode – das Thema der Eco-Fashion-Messe während der Fashion Week Berlin. Im Juli 2017…
We can’t recycle our way to ‘zero waste’
Why is recycling low on the waste hierarchy?
Recycling Reconsidered: A must-read text for discard studies
If I could only recommend one text in discard studies, it would be Recycling Reconsidered by Samantha MacBride (2011, MIT Press).
Special Issue on the Circular Economy in Journal of Industrial Ecology
“Viewed as a concept by some, a framework by others, the CE is an alternative to a traditional take-make-dispose linear economy. A CE aims to keep products, components,…
Electronics Reuse and Recycling in Peru: A Photographic exploration
A walk down this little street in Peru’s capital provides a glimpse into an understated network that quietly plays a critical role in reducing the environmental impacts of…
An Open Letter to My Children
Dear Nathaniel and Hannah, I am sorry that my generation has failed you. We have bequeathed you a world that has too many problems, too much fear, and too much…
Occasional Paper 6: Destructivistas
Joel Cahen (2012, revised 2016) With our present day awareness, the arts as we have known them up to now appear to us in general to be fakes…
The Politics of Recycling vs. Reusing
Calling reuse “recycling” a common and seemingly simple mistake, yet it is extremely important to differentiate between the two for political and environmental reasons.
How to do a household waste audit–and why
A waste audit is an analysis of a localized waste stream from your building, household, classroom, town or business. It can identify what types of waste that local…
A Circular Economy? Disruptive Innovation Festival
What is the circular economy, exactly? Is it capitalism with better accounting? Is it about scaling up recycling and reuse? Is it about consuming less, and producing less,…