A moldy piece of fruit is a waste object that could be seen as a hazard, a risk, and a resource. The Moldy piece of fruit is considered a hazard because mold is generally not the best to be around there’s a lot of people to have mold allergies and also consuming mold can cause a lot of people to get sick.  The Moldy piece of fruit can also be considered a risk as it may cause other food in the fridge to become moldy faster as it spreads its spores which can create more frustration and loss of goods.  but it can also be seen as a resource since moldy food is something that you can put in the compost bin and the compost can be used for fertilizing soil and other plants and so in that mind it is not as bad as it ending up in a landfill and not being able to decompose due to the  environment. Things that are seen as a hazard  is something I am more likely to throw away if I see something as a resource I will want to keep it until I’m able to use it as a resource and so there have been times when I put moldy food in the freezer because I don’t have the energy to take it out to the compost bin but I also would feel terribly guilty about throwing away food that was once fresh and I could have had the potential to eat I just didn’t. When I think of moldy food I was unable to get to due to my lack of object permanence with my ADHD  and my lack of energy and fatigue;  it makes me feel less bad if I’m able to consider it as a resource that still has value.

I have a small collection of sticks in my room, which when outside wouldn’t be considered waste but since I have brought them inside, they have become out of place, and therefore waste. I keep them around because I tend to think that I would use them for something at some point, which makes them a potential resource. Sticks are also, in a way, filth. They were brought from outside and weren’t really cleaned off at all, so they have dirt and other debris on them. People will see these sticks and think of them as filthy, because of the debris they might leave on my floor that I have to clean up, which makes them the most like waste, since they are creating more waste and filth in the area they occupy. Out of all of these conceptualizations, they are the most out of place. When outside, they have the chance to complete their life, from falling from their tree to decomposing into the ground, but by bringing them inside, with no connection to the dirt or their lost trees outside, they don’t get to have that chance. Instead, they’ll dry out and stay there for as long as I want them. 

Something I chose to conceptualize waste are magazines, since there are multiple perspectives about it. The disposability is one of the first conceptualizations I think of related to magazines. This is most likely due to the fact that it’s not like a book where you can read and re-experience the story over again, it’s information/news. After you become aware of news, one can say that it’s not something to re-read, so it no longer has a purpose. Secondly, there’s resourceability because they can be repurposed in different unique methods. Just to name a few: jewelry, buttons, paper mache, and other crafty things. I think seeing the potential in items generally deemed disposable requires a different type of consciousness that I find interesting. Thirdly, hoardability comes to mind due to the large quantity of it amongst hoarders. Items in the paper family are easy to accumulate and often more accessible. It becomes tough considering that some hoarders feel guilty of throwing things out, so in their mind they’re combatting wasteful practices. I think the disposable conceptualization makes the most sense as to why they’re considered to be waste. As technology advances, so should access to media news services so there isn’t this bearing amount of magazines in your home.

Using the different ways to conceptualize waste, Moore has presented many concepts that collectively give a wider view of what waste means and represents. The object that I chose is a compostable plastic cup that we get from the dining commons or the Kern on Hampshire campus. The first concept is matter out of place. The fact that the cuts say compostable on them makes it more confusing when throwing the cups away. Inside of the Kern Cafe there are trash containers that are labeled ‘Compostable’. This is really great while you’re sitting and drinking in the Kern but if you haven’t finished your drink and you want to leave, by the time you are done with it the compostable trash containers are nowhere in sight. A solution is to put a couple more of those trash cans around campus. I believe that people would be good at throwing away scraps of compostable things in them. Inside the dining commons there is also a compostable section but there is no recycling. The matter out of place in this case is that there is not a readily available place to dispose of them around campus. This also gets wrapped up in commodities. The school uses so many of these cups. It is easier to have these cups around than to have reusable ones because people take them out of the places they get them from. It also goes along with filth and risk. The bacteria in the cups days after use has grown on the cup and using it again might be dangerous or ‘gross’ in some people’s minds. Seeing these cups around campus makes me realize how much waste just this one very small campus makes and how much more UMass makes.

I chose dirt which may seem weird at first but if you think about it dirt is one of the most diverse. Dirt is waste only based on perspective and the perspective changes for every situation. If you were to look at it from Moores conceptualizations for example when it’s out of place (someone mentioned that in a class) it is negative and seen as waste, disposable. But outside on the ground it’s (usually)  a positive, manageable thing. Of course if you were to then get some of it on you it would be labeled as filth and even possibly a risk depending on the perspective.

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.

I put some leftovers in my common room fridge a few weeks back. Last weekend, I threw out a tupperware full of moldy food. It wasn’t that bad, I could have cleaned it out if I had the patience and stomach to do so and gone on with the rest of my life. Moore describes 13 ways of conceptualizing waste, but the three that fit this waste item best in my opinion are hazard, filth, and abject. As a hazard, this item poses a health risk to myself if I eat it, and if it spills, potentially contaminates an entire floor’s worth of food. If I try to clean out the box, then I run the risk of leaving even a grain of moldy rice in an already overflowing and foul-smelling common room sink. Thinking about this object as abject, I threw out the still functional Tupperware because no matter how many times I wash it out, its still going to be tainted by the mold, I’m not eating out of that thing, I’m not gonna be the Mold Girl. However, I think the most accurate way to conceptualize my reaction would be filth. The thing looked gross, food isn’t supposed to be a fuzzy shape of pale blue, and I knew that opening the box had a fifty/fifty chance of me puking at the smell if there was one. This wasn’t a logical reaction, I could have put on a mask put in a bare minimum of elbow grease and not thrown out a perfectly good Tupperware, but I’m not messing with decomposed food slime if I can help it.

Capitalism is an agent of colonialism. People are conceptualized as waste, inorder to justify their oppression. They are turned into objects so that the moral consideration owed to them is ceased. Capitalism upholds colonial thought and colonial violence. It twists us into something inhuman. Under capitalism people become objects of waste. I think people might be able to fit into every one of Moore’s conceptualizations. But these 3 categorizations stood out to me. 

Waste as abject:

“abject posits waste as something that is expelled from the social body in order to shore up the boundaries that divide that which belongs from that which does not.” Positioning a people as some sort of disease, a virus that must be eradicated, cleansed. 

Waste as disorder and matter out of place:

“what the media presented along the US-Mexico border during 1991–1994 was an extreme portrait of ‘‘‘matter out of place’’ implicitly borne by the movement of people out of place: Mexican immigrants”… “it is impossible to dismiss the associations drawn between self-soiling Mexicans, mired in their own excrement, and the larger projection of the expanding border, seeping like a swamped septic system’s drainage field across the greater American landscape.” Those in power create a story, a theater. They put on a show, none of what they show us or tell us is real. They have forced migrants into this role. 

Waste as resource:

People are used for their labor, for their land, for their children. People are thought of in terms of what they can provide to an empire. 

The object I’ve chosen to talk about in this blog post is a Dunkin Donuts cup. I will talk about it in order of filth, commodity, and out of place. A Dunkin Donuts cup (DDC) is considered filthy or gross once you’re done with your drink. Also most people tend to find DDCs outside on the side of the road, which is considerably more filthy. Thinking of them as filthy ruins the ability to reuse the cup for any other drinks or anything else like even a planting cup. DDC as a commodity is interesting to think about. When you buy one you’re most likely buying the contents inside so the cup is just a vessel. Most people never just buy the cup and if you want one they probably give them to you for free. DDCs are always out of place because where do they even go? 

I chose a carved pumpkin post Halloween. When I first think about a decaying pumpkin I think of filth. It is dirty, gooey, smelly, and I probably wouldn’t want to touch it with my bare hands. As we get further and further away from Halloween it also becomes out of place. A pumpkin on your front step or balcony in October is acceptable but a week into November it becomes more and more out of place. But as a person who composts, the pumpkin now becomes a resource because it will help enrich the compost which will help plant more pumpkins next year.  

The idea of the pumpkin being filthy makes the most sense in connection with why it is considered waste. When things seem gross and smelly you are more likely to want to throw them away while the idea of the pumpkin as a resource does the opposite. Because the pumpkin is starting to decompose already it will make great compost.