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…
Tag: Recycling
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,…
The Ocean Conservatory’s Call for Mass Incineration in Asia: Disposability for Profit, Fantasies of Containment, & Colonialism
The Ocean Conservatory would like to burn 80% of the waste in coastal Asia with US-made incinerators. According to a wide range of experts and grassroots organizations from…
The Power Behind Disposability: Why New York City’s ban on polystyrene was vilified, sued, and reversed
On July 1 New York City banned disposable Styrofoam containers. First they were sued over the decision, and last week the ban was overturned. What is the big…
How the Ocean Cleanup Array Fundamentally Misunderstands Marine Plastics and Causes Harm
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Ocean Cleanup array, designed to clean plastics from the ocean like a baleen whale, is one of these…
Fabulous Art from Abandoned Flip-flops
Cleaning up beach waste in the form of abandoned rubber flip-flops . . . recycling landfill-able castoffs . . . training low-income men and women in job skills and…