Dumpster Diving at the World’s Largest Particle Accelerator

This is where the creative process foundational to science, fixing, and hacking come together. Rather than making more of the same, whether it’s in science or technology, the scientists, artists, and engineers at GOSH push boundaries, exceed norms, and open up possibilities. Trash is one avenue towards that goal.

The Politics of Recycling vs. Reusing

Calling reuse “recycling” a common and seemingly simple mistake, yet it is extremely important to differentiate between the two for political and environmental reasons.

Toxic Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Endurance: A Summary in Tweets

Toxics: A Symposium on Exposure, Entanglement, and Endurance was heralded as “the most important conversation on body burdens yet.” See the Twitter version of that conversation here.

Municipal versus Industrial Waste: Questioning the 3-97 ratio

We do not have an idea of the quantity of non-household solid waste produced in North America. When we do have ideas of (sub)quantities, we do not have good classifications, so we do not know what we are quantifying.

How to do a household waste audit–and why

A waste audit is an analysis of a localized waste stream from your building, household, classroom, town or business. It can identify what types of waste that local generates, and how much. How do you conduct an audit? What can you learn from one?

Piping as poison: the Flint water crisis and America’s toxic infrastructure

Over the past few decades, we have met with much success in curbing some of Americans’ exposure to lead. Yet they have struggled to contain this continuing danger precisely because it is literally built into our water systems.

Which came first: people of colour or pollution?

A pair of new publications focus on the “chicken or egg” question in environmental justice: Are present-day disparities around hazardous sites the result of a pattern of placing hazardous waste sites, polluting industrial facilities, and other locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) disproportionately where poor people and people of color live? Or are they the result of demographic changes that occur after the facilities have been sited?

Trading on distortion

The lead researcher on a seminal work mapping the international traffic of e-waste responds to criticism of his research on material flows.

Building DIY citizen science technology to see invisible marine plastics

We’ve been working on the problem of making tiny, often invisible marine plastics visible through do-it-yourself (DIY) technologies. You can build your own and investigate your local environment.

An Indigenous Feminist’s take on the Ontological Turn: ‘ontology’ is just another word for colonialism

Originally posted on speculative fish-ctions (Dr. Zoe Todd):
by Zoe Todd, PhD Candidate, Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen Personal paradigm shifts have a way of sneaking up on you. It started, innocently enough, with a trip to Edinburgh to see the great Latour discuss his latest work in February 2013. I was giddy with excitement:…