By Max Liboiron Sewers are the most expensive and expansive urban infrastructures in North America. They are underground. They are made of inflexible pipes.They are difficult to access. And increasingly unpredictable acts of nature, from earthquakes to climate disruption, are making the probability of their spectacular, large-scale failure something to take note of. A couple […]
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By Max Liboiron Occupy Wall Street, and specifically representatives of the People’s Library, are suing New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg, its police commissioner Ray Kelly, the Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, and other City officials in the seizure and discard of 2,798 books during the raid on Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. If you are […]
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By Max Liboiron. When visiting National Parks, be sure to note the location of the nearest “1st Amendment Rights Area.” As a reminder, this is the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or […]
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By Max Liboiron The Surfrider Foundation’s mission “is the protection and enjoyment of oceans, waves and beaches through a powerful activist network.” As it turns out, that means most of their work has to do with discards, waste and pollution. Litter, oil spills, wasting water, plastic trash, and chemical runoff are some of their primary […]
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By Max Liboiron One topic we rarely post about on Discard Studies is the connection between power and forced acts of waste. Robert Moses’s aggressive eviction-based freeways in the 1960s, landlord sponsored arson in Harlem and the Bronx in the 1970s, and, as of Monday, the forcible eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Zucotti Park […]
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Elextrolux has commodified, beautified, and publicized one of the worst pollution dilemmas of the century. Last Fall they unveiled “Vacs from the Sea,” a series of vacuum cleaners made from ocean plastics. Each vac uses plastic from one of five global gyre locations collected in collaboration with environmental groups. The North Sea edition, for example, […]
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