Canadian regulators are all over the map with respect to flame retardants. On PBDEs, Canada infamously refused to take meaningful regulatory action. The government found most PBDEs to be toxic substances in 2006, but it declined to ban or restrict them in consumer products in 2008 or in 2016.
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. The authors discuss and derive new definitions of “circularity.” They cover fundamental determinants of material lifespan, such as economic demand, thermodynamics, product design, and durability.
Colonialism in Canada is an ongoing structure whereby settler society and government assert sovereignty over lands already occupied by Indigenous peoples.
Notions of “sustainability” and “urban greening” ought to include values of justice and equity. Otherwise, important projects like the Blue Greenway will build sustainable waterfronts for the urban elite, rather than spreading the environmental benefits of toxic cleanup to the many.
If I could only recommend one text in discard studies, it would be Recycling Reconsidered by Samantha MacBride (2011, MIT Press).
The concept of citizenship originally described inhabitants of (probably walled) towns. Some insistence on specificity of place certainly remains, although the concept today generally refers to nations rather than cities. But what are concerned citizens to do in the face of problems such as climate change, which cannot easily be contained by walls or borders, and to which we all contribute?
The forces arrayed against Donald Trump’s presidency in the US could soon encompass most of the world once Trump’s climate change threats meet resistance.
Interactions between regulators and the private sector at the federal and state levels typically are collegial, and that both sides work to build and maintain cooperative partnerships.
Stopping the pipeline in one spot, after all, won’t stop oil altogether. Climate change, however, is a threat most of all to Indigenous peoples around the world.
Some of Trumps efforts are literally to support and intensify environmental pollution, and some are efforts to make certain people disposable.
But people are fighting back. A lot of them are bureaucrats and techies.
Discard Studies 