By Josh Lepawsky, Joshua Goldstein, and Yvan Schulz On 12 May 2015 the United Nations Environmental Program announced the release of a new report called Waste Crime – Waste Risks. Among the topics covered by the report is the global problem of discarded electronics or ‘e-waste’. After reading the report with a focus on the […]
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On Black Friday, a massive amount of highly polluting, future consumer electronic waste is about to be unleashed, according to a new report by the national policy center Demos. Without convenient and guaranteed safe outlets, e-waste has become the “world’s fastest growing and potentially most dangerous waste problem,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
How do you study cityness through waste? Cityness has been used to describe both “how urban citizens give meaning to the city they live in and how this creation of meaning alters the way the city is represented” and as “an instrument to capture something that otherwise might easily get lost: types of urbanity that are non-Western.”
The E-waste Academy Scientists Edition (EWAS) has brought together nearly 80 young researchers from around the world, looking at solving the e-waste from different disciplinary perspectives. It is now accepting applications, due August 31, for its November event.
Josh Lepawsky’s work on “The changing geography of global trade in electronic discards” shows that over time, the global circulation of electronic waste is characterized by developing countries are exporting to developed nations. The data that lead to this analysis are now in an interactive format (cartograms) that allow viewers to see transactions 1996, and again in 2012.
Participatory design is a practice where ordinary users are part of the design process to help ensure the results meets their needs and values. Thus, both the process and the products tend to be different than a top-down approach to creating (and wasting) objects. Love in E-waste adds another twist, in that rather than designing something from scratch, it starts with a waste product.
The project asks: “what if we were required to physically store and care for our personal devices, such as cell phones and desktop computers, long after these machines served their intended function? In such an imaginary, unusable technologies remain within our sights, and in our sites.” They are asking people to submit their stories.
How questioning maintenance and repair can help discussing such issues as humans and non-humans relationships, materiality and objects agency, matters of concern and matters of care, and more generally the ongoing production of social order?
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.
Organised by the United Nations University under the aegis of the StEP Initiative, the EWAS has over the past three editions brought together nearly 60 young researchers from around the world, looking at solving the e-waste from different disciplinary perspectives. It has become the foremost forum available to young scientists to share their knowledge, interact […]
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