Something that I routinely throw away is the Q-tips, I use them often when I do my makeup and I have been doing a lot of henna lately and it is convenient to clean up my work with Q-tips. I think that if these were found in the future, they would not be able to be fully distinguished. I think that they could draw out that the culture of my time was wasteful and artistic. I also think that they would assume that the main priority of the time was convenience.
Author Archives: Kaiya Colby
Pollution
One of my hobbies is jewelry making, because of this I have a large collection of beads and charms. When I get new beads they always either come in plastic bags or they come strung onto a piece of plastic string. I am always aware of this in the back of my mind yet I continue to buy beads. Whenever I visit my old town, I end up going to the local bead store. When I get back and go to put the beads into my bead box, I end up creating a pile of trash from the packaging. The spring that most beads are strung on when I buy them is not reusable and I end up having to throw it away. When I get beads in a plastic bag, they are often sealed in a way that I cannot reuse the packaging. These problems come with how the beads are packaged, but this is the most convenient way to package beads so that they do not spill everywhere. I try and bring my small containers when I go to the local bead shop, but it is impossible to do the same with general craft stores.
Circular Economy
This prompt made me think of phones, specifically how most phones are more easily replaced than they are to fix. Products like phones are always being upgraded and new products are always coming out. This fuels our consumerist society. I think that in a circular economy, products like phones would only have one model and there would be more accessible ways to fix them. I also think that people could customize the functions of their phones based on what they would use them for. This way each phone would be able to be unique to each person and there would be less of a need for endless amounts of add-on products that are marketed to us presently. The phones could also be sent to the companies if someone changes how they use their phone, and if there is new software. I also think that the parts could be used to make other products if the phone is no longer being used. The parts could be recycled and used for other purposes. While this is just brainstorming an idea, I think that ideas like these can help us distance ourselves from the consumerist habits that we hold when it comes to products like these.
Disruption
When thinking about waste disruption, I think of how cities treat homeless people. The dynamic between large cities and their homeless populations is very hostile. The people are treated as waste and are seen as a nuisance to the authorities and the general public. Homeless people “disrupt” the cities in the eyes of city officials. Their presence and relativity to waste and trash make people feel like it is okay to treat them as such. I think of hostile infrastructure and how homelessness is often used as a talking point for city officials. I have often seen politicians say that they will lower homeless rates and “clean up the city”. They claim these things to gain support from people yet they often do nothing about it, or somehow, make the problem worse. This connects to how impactful forms of waste can drastically change an area and shift political movements.
Conceptualizing waste
The form of waste that I chose to talk about is compost/ food waste. Compost is a resource, used for an array of farming and growing purposes. Compost is also seen as filth, and finally, compost is also a commodity. Compost as a resource is very useful within agricultural spaces, providing fertilizer that helps the growth of plants. In this sense, compost is something that is wanted in the context of agriculture. Compost comes from the waste of food scraps, and can be used in a variety of ways. However, when we come across compost in its purest form it also also seen as filth. Food scraps can smell and can be a magnet for maggots and other creatures, this contributes to the lens of filth when we interact with compost in a different context. Compost is also a commodity, something that is a privilege to have access to. Having a place to compost food waste is not accessible to all. At Hampshire, we do not have compost bins in the dorm buildings, if we wish to compost food waste we have to walk to the Dining Commons or the Kern. This is an example of how composting areas are not readily available in all spaces. When we interact with compost, our views and feelings change in different contexts. Context is something that we have talked a lot about in class, and context is a large factor in how we distinguish types of waste.
Disposability
I regularly interact with aluminum cans. I usually drink energy drinks and I like pineapple juice. The way that these are packaged is always in cans. Naturally, when I am done drinking the contents of the drink I am left with the empty cans. This object is seen as disposable because it has served its purpose, and there are no further uses for the can. It has done its job of housing the sustenance that I paid for and now it is supposed to be recycled or thrown away. When I recycle the cans I have no real idea of where it will be going, I do not have much of an understanding of how Hampshire handles recycling. It is interesting to me that this item is only made to hold something that is consumed, there is no longevity of the object, and it is made to be tossed away once someone finishes it or has decided that they do not want it anymore. I also assume that when I buy the drink I am also paying for the can, the design of the can also makes it a single-use item because it cannot be resealed. I see this as a flawed, but deliberate design by these companies to make sure that people go back to buy their product. Honestly, it does work because I will end up going back to buy another one. This speaks to the larger problem of design and consumerism that is so present in the objects that we interact with, I also think that there is something to be said about the drink itself. This is another thing that these companies have control over, the drinks cannot be easily recreated.
The place that I chose is the common room in my hall. The common room is a very social space in my hall and is used by everyone and their guests. In the common room is also where the main trash and recycling bins are. While the waste bins are not the main focus of the room, thinking about this prompt, I have noticed that the room is set up around the bins. There are two larger chairs and a couch in the common room, the set up of the furniture is mostly centered around the corner of the room by the windows. I have noticed that the setup of the room right now is as far as it can be from the trash. The use of the room is either for social activities or to use the trash. The flow of the room is affected by the placement of the waste bins in the room. There is also the aspect of distance from the bins, the room is set up so that the social circle of the room is facing away from the bins. This is interesting to me because this is not something that I would usually think about when I am sitting in a space. With topics like this from class, it is now hard to not notice how we unconsciously set up our spaces around waste.
Responsibility
When I recycle, I take personal responsibility to make sure I am conscious of what I can recycle. This is something that I do to help the work of those who then have to take it from the front of my house. Especially when it comes to plastics, I check the recycling number of each item to ensure that they can be taken to the recycling center. I also take it upon myself to make sure that the plastic is as clean as possible, removing any food and rinseing it off. I try to remember to remove the labels, but I do not always remember. This is the responsibility that I have given myself because I can, meaning I have the time and resources available to me for me to take these extra steps. The moment that the recycling leaves the front of my house I no longer feel responsible for it. I do not know if my efforts help in any way or if it all just ends up in landfills. I have not researched how my recycling center follows through and how they process the plastic. Because I do not have access to the recycling I don’t hold any responsibility for it, the kind of “out of sight out of mind” mindset. I think that taking the responsibility of sorting recycling is not something that everyone can do. I believe that there should be more transparency on what happens once your recycling or trash is picked up. I think that people would be more inclined to do more if they were able to see that it makes a difference. In my years of recycling I have not thought much about waste workers, I have only become more aware of them because of my own research and discussions like the ones that we have in class. I do not know what their work is like, I can only imagine from what I have heard and read. I imagine that their work involves a lot of sorting, each type of plastic is recycled in different ways and there are entirely different procedures for other materials like paper and cardboard. I also think that there is so much that they have to throw away due to them not being able to process it.
Reclaiming “Waste”
The object that I reclaimed is a piece of film that was at one point in the hands of an artist. The film has some markings that are seen in the light. This was “waste” that had been put into the trash bin in the arts village. I decided to take this piece because it is beautiful to me and I wanted to put it on my wall. I know that this was at one point something that someone had made, yet thrown away. I do not know why, but it is now able to bring me joy by adorning my room. The process of going through the trash was a pretty comfortable experience, I knew that there would be no food waste that I would feel gross touching. It was interesting to see the amount of thrown-out art, and objects that artists had deemed unimportant. I saw many sketches and scraped projects, and it made me think of the number of times I had given up on projects because they did not go the way that I wanted them to. I wonder if anyone would have found beauty in things I did not.
Shit Prompt
I worked in a daycare for all of my high school years. Something that comes with the job is to change diapers, and generally help children in the bathroom, and I have become very desensitized to baby shit. I have been thinking about recently, with our conversations around shit, how all of my coworkers and I talked about shit. Normal conversations in the daycare would center around how a certain child was eating and how they were feeling based on their shit. We could tell if one child was not feeling well, or if they were not eating enough fiber or fruits, we could also gauge their levels of stress based on how often they went to the bathroom. It is interesting that we can pick up on subtle changes in a child’s mood or health based on something so ostracized in other settings. This mindset around shit is something that is not seen in many other settings and it makes me wonder what it would be like if everyone shared this mindset.