Tag Archives: scale

Sorting It Out: Sustainability in Higher Education

by Kathy Zhang In May of 2021, I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a combined degree in Environmental and Sustainability Studies and Art. I joined sustainability efforts on campus as a second-year student, at first emphasizing trash, compost, and recycling. I felt especially passionate about my recycling initiatives at the housing […]
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Solutions to waste and the problem of scalar mismatches

Waste advocacy and popular environmentalism suffer from a constant mismatch of scales. Problems are at one scale, and solutions are at another. This article calls for shift in cultural discourses that include proportion and scale so that information, problem identification, and proposed solutions are able to intervene into problems in meaningful and effective ways.

Against Awareness, For Scale: Garbage is Infrastructure, Not Behavior

The journey from awareness to behavior change is a long and arduous one, and few make it. Even for those who change their behavior, the scale of the change is often too small to impact the problem at hand. So what do we do?