A new article by Josh Lepawsky argues against the popular notion that e-waste travels predominantly from ‘developed’ countries to ‘undeveloped’ countries, and what this change means for regulation and recycling practices.
The archives of the Chicago Recycling Coalition are now cataloged and available for use. They comprise the CRC’s battles to end incineration of waste in Chicago in the 1980s, and also the long history of Chicago’s attempts to develop curbside recycling services.
Despite San Francisco’s 80% diversion rate, the average person sends about 2.7 pounds per day to landfills. On a per person basis, it would seem that record-setting San Franciscans send roughly the same quantities to the dump as their friends in other places in the US. Samantha MacBride explains the logics behind these statistics.
Shih-yang Kao’s dissertation on demolition waste in Beijing provides rich material for scholars interested in the players involved in urban-rural discard commodity chains. While post-demolition waste was considered a resource for both socialist (1949-1978) and reform era (1978-present) governments, The City Recycled: The Afterlives of Demolished Buildings in Post-war Beijing narrates how values of waste shifted for each period, as well as how it continues to shift under different present-day policies, geographical locations, regional and local economies, and stakeholder groups.
By Ashwini Srinivasamoha. Chennai, the Indian state capital of Tamil Nadu, is the sixth most populous city in India, and is located on the southeast coast of India. One of the most severe environmental and public health issues facing Chennai is waste, and is currently managed through two refuse dumps, receiving over 5,000 tons of […]
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*This is an edited transcript from the IDEAS City lecture on waste by Max Liboiron. Modern waste—that is, mid-20th to 21st century waste—is characterized by a few things. First, there is its tonnage– there is a lot of it, mostly industrial. About 98 percent of waste produced in the United States is industrial solid waste, […]
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In May, the IDEAS City festival hosted a panel on waste. A recording of the event, mysteriously retitled as World Waste: Recycling Cities and Saving the Planet, even though recycling was fairly trounced as a way to save the planet, is now available online. Be forewarned: you can’t fast forward to skip around within the […]
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This post originally appeared on Wired Opinion 06.18.13. Madison Sheffield cracks open a toaster oven, jams her hand inside, then turns on the power. It looks like she’s about to electrocute herself, but she seems unfazed. “Thermostat or heating element?” Sheffield mutters, yanking on wires and poking around with a multimeter. “Why isn’t this working?” […]
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Via Reid Lifset, editor of Journal of Industrial Ecology (JIE): Over the past two decades governments around the world have been experimenting with a new strategy for managing waste. By making producers responsible for their products when they become wastes, policy makers seek to significantly increase the recycling-and recyclability-of computers, packaging, automobiles, and household hazardous […]
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This is Dutch photographer Bas Princen’s staggering panorama of the Zabaleen settlement in Cairo, Egypt’s capital. These residents, living in an area known as garbage city, store, sort and recycle trash to earn their living. The photograph was included in the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and an exhibition at Storefront Art and Architecture in New […]
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