The readings for the last week and a half connect issues of personal responsibility for environmental issues (like waste) with who does the work with dealing with it (you, waste haulers, sorters, etc). This week, choose a specific form of waste. (This could build off of one of your previous posts, or it could be something new.) When dealing with this waste, what do you consider to be your responsibility? What/where/when is the point where it becomes someone else’s responsibility? Do you believe this is an appropriate point to mark this division of labor, and why? Do you know who deals with this waste next, and what their work is like? If you do, briefly describe it, and if you don’t know, what do you imagine their work to be like?

Readings from this and last week:

Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics 1, no. 3 (2001): 31–52.

Royte, Elizabeth. “Dark Angels of Detritus.” In Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. First edition. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005, 19-31.

Nagle, Robin. “You are a San Man” and “We Eat Our Own.” In Picking up: On the Streets and behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. First edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, 105-112, 143-154.

Tupelo, Ethan. “Revaluing Capitalist Waste Through Worker Ownership.” In Debris of Progress: A Political Ethnography of Critical Infrastructure. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2022.