Starting today, from August 11th to 15th, the Canadian Association of Geographers meets in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Among the panels are three sessions on Waste and Indeterminacy, organized by Josh Lepawsky from Memorial University. If you’re going to be at the conference, please stop by and say hello. If not, Lepawsky is generously recording the presentations for public consumption. We’ll let you know when they’re ready.

Thursday, August 15
09:00-10:20
Waste and Indeterminacy I
Studying Waste/Discards with the notion of ‘Boundaries and Edges’ (Akese)
A Preliminary Investigation of Waste to Energy Uptake by Ontario Municipalities (Rollins, Baxter)
Food Waste: On the Horizon for Extended Producer Responsibility (Maclaren)
Moving Waste Around: The Impacts of Waste Transportation from an Environmental Sociology
Perspective (Kuyvenhoven)

13:20-14:40
Waste and Indeterminacy II
Fair trade e-waste? Exploring the possibilities and limits of an experiment in ethical economy (Lepawsky)
Untangling complexity: analyzing waste management in tourism dependent communities (Nagel, Gutberlet)
Defining Pollution by Defining Harm: The Rise and Fall of Assimilative Capacity from Sewage to Plastics (Liboiron)
Legal geographies of waste in Canadian cities (Parizeau, Lepawsky)

15:00-16:20
Waste and Indeterminacy III
Thermochemical Waste Conversion: Uncertainty in Material and Energy Transformations (MacBride)
Museum of Contemporary Rubbish (Bradshaw)

On an unrelated panel on Wednesday, August 14, from 9:00-10:20 there is also:

Tree rings as pollution archives: historical lead levels in St. John’s (Danek et al.)