Discard Studies

The forgotten story of how a toxic spill and a book launched Britain’s environmental movement

When in 1963 some farm animals in the parish of Smarden in Kent became sick and died, suspicions fell on a nearby pesticide factory run by a division of Rentokil Laboratories. The events that followed amounted to one of the first environmental scandals in contemporary British history – one that would galvanise the environmental movement.

Students for Zero Waste Conference, 2017 (Philadelphia)

Join The Post-Landfill Action Network at the Students for Zero Waste Conference on November 3rd-4th, 2017, in Philadelphia, PA!

How we discovered pollution-poisoned crustaceans in the Mariana Trench

A trench amphipod, Hirondellea gigas, from the deepest place on Earth: Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench (10,890m). Alan Jamieson, Newcastle University, Author provided Alan Jamieson, Newcastle University Even animals from the deepest places on Earth have accumulated pollutants made by humans. That’s the unfortunate finding of a new study …

CfP: Hazardous Time-Scapes: How to Make Sense of Toxic Landscapes from Multiple Timed, Spaced, and Embodied Perspectives?

The workshop Hazardous Time-Scapes seeks to understand human-environment relationships through the lens of multiple overlapping time, space, and body regimes as they have (and continue to) play out in toxic landscapes.

Your city could be exporting deadly air pollution – here’s why

Goods and services produced in one region for use by another region are responsible for 22% (762,400) of air pollution-related deaths worldwide.

Cleaning up toxic sites shouldn’t clear out the neighbors

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.

CPF: Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy

Workshop – Call for Papers Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) Berlin, Germany – 21-22 June 2018 Convenors: Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (MPIWG, Germany), Thomas Lekan, (University of South Carolina, USA), Sebastián Ureta, (Universidad …

We can’t recycle our way to ‘zero waste’

Why is recycling low on the waste hierarchy?

Pristine paradise to rubbish dump: the same Pacific island, 23 years apart

Remember, this is not waste that was dumped directly by human hands. It was washed here on ocean currents, meaning that this is not just about one beach – it shows how much the pollution problem has grown in the entire ocean system in little more than two decades.

Call for applicants: Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia (deadline July 15)

The ACP will last four days. It is built around four main seminars (each participant will choose 2), and includes a fieldwork day exploring Delaware Valley sites.

Bibliography on critical approaches to toxics and toxicity

Toxicity, toxins, and toxicants are areas of critical concern because controversies over what they mean, how they act, how they come into being and where, and what counts as evidence have high stake ramifications. These texts offer critical insights into these processes:

Article Alert! New texts in discard studies (May & June 2017)

Since critical discard studies doesn’t (yet!) have its own journal, conference, or department, Discard Studies publishes a regular table of contents alerts for articles, reports, and books in the field. If you are interested in becoming an editor for non-English article alerts on Discard Studies, or know of a recent article for …

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