In Abington Massachusetts and almost every other place on planet Earth drinking water is a very regular activity. The ignorance of pollution within water is a privilege that most people don’t understand they have. The idea that you must accept that the simple act of drinking water is inherently polluted. The US government has limits to how much pollution is allowed in drinking water but that means that there is still pollutants in our drinking water. In my town we have received several notices of unsafe drinking water over the last few years as limits of PFAS change in Mass. Our drinking water is just over the limit of pollution but the reason we got notices recently isn’t because the levels have risen in the last few years but because the limits have changed. Why is the water not okay now when it was the day before they sent the notice? Why is any amount of pollution a safe amount of pollution? If we decided one day that any pollution is unacceptable then there is no viable drinking water in my area until they install new filters and improve our water treatment facility. For a while we would need to use bottled water which requires more pollution to be produced. Until then I will be drinking water with PFAS in it and waiting for us to figure our shit out. 

https://abingtonnews.org/2023/10/11/ahs-ap-bio-class-tests-for-pfas-in-abington-streams-ponds/ 

We don’t think about what people in the future will think of our waste and where it will go and what history it will tell. We reclaimed waste and it’s meaning to us through a chart that shows how we can see certain waste when it is observed closely and what it tells of our culture. Looking at the waste we create we can see the solution can be found in the problem itself. Waste products can also be a reflection of our own lives and what it can tell about ourselves and our culture that moves so quickly it needs single use products to get by and how it conveniences us and inconveniences us at the same time. Through reclaiming waste we can really open our eyes to what goes on beyond the product being thrown away.

I was in the QCAC doing homework with a friend and I noticed that there was a significant amount of metal soda cans in the trash and recycling. There must have been a party or event the night before for so many cans to be piled in there. I come from Florida where there is no deposit fee for cans or glass so coming to school in Massachusetts I was excited to see how that affects the recycling in the area. For those who were partying in here earlier I guess it did not influence them enough to save the cans. But it gave me an idea! My friend collects metal cans for the 5 cent deposit each and I now just gained nearly one dozen of them. I ended up letting him know and he met me at the QCAC to pick the cans out. The nice thing about the cans being inside and fresh they did not have any maggots or ants on them like the ones by the dumpster (that was horrifying to pick up without gloves). These cans just needed a quick rinse to get the syrupy soda out and they were ready to be put in the pile. These were fairly easy to retrieve compared to other waste I have taken out of the trash.

I have also experimented with making pencil holders with soda cans, which was a bit difficult due to my lack of proper cutting equipment. I hope to explore more of diverting waste into crafts. I think I would prefer to work with other materials since aluminum cans are much easier to recycle compared to their plastic relatives. I was happy to save some of the cans from the trash and ensure they were actually recycled unlike much of the recycled materials aren’t. An empty can is seen as something that has lost its initial purpose but there is still value even after it no longer holds a person’s drink. With bottle deposits and through crafts.

I have been sick for a while, so I have been going through a lot of ibuprofen for my sore throat. After I finished the bottle, I threw it in the trash can in my dorm room. Then I noticed the yarn scraps on my desk and realized that the ibuprofen bottle is the perfect size to store small scraps of yarn. I grabbed the bottle from my trash. I wasn’t very worried about retrieving it because I knew everything that was in there already. Generally, when something has served its purpose, it is trash, it no longer has a use unless you give it one. For this bottle its main purpose was to hold medicine, when the medicine was gone it became an empty vessel until I decided to fill it with yarn scraps and then it had a purpose again. Things are only trash when you can’t imagine any more uses for them. That is why the three Rs are so important: before something becomes trash it should be reduced, reused, and then recycled, that way it continues to serve a purpose even after the original one is complete.

I am someone who is constantly on the lookout for lost objects and a firm believer in the saying “ones man’s trash, another man’s treasure”. I have rescued many an Item from the side of the road or trash cans; old magazines, cigar displays, chairs, plants etc. While this item itself didn’t come from me it represents that mindset.  I was told by my parents who were on vacation going through the national parks in the west that I should check my mailbox on Monday. It arrived later than expected of course but one day when checking for mail I discovered the weirdest lumpy package stuffed in my mailbox. Opening it up I found this duck my family had found either on the road or in the trash at one of the rest stops and mailed to me. It is the creepiest weirdest looking duck I think I’ve ever seen but is also apparently a vintage item?? I feel very blessed but also cursed…

Though I haven’t physically gone into a waste bin/bag/dumpster, I do think glass containers would be something I’d retrieve from these containers. Glass is something that I personally reuse a lot in my family household and not something I automatically tie to waste/trash. For example, previous salsa containers can easily be cleaned and repurposed so many times that it’s not something that has a time limit to its value. Glass containers in particular could be seen as waste, due to this fear of the unknown and “using after someone” that we’ve been socialized to not be as resourceful in our communities. On the other hand, some states recycle glass and people are aware of it being reused for another purpose, but still it should be more encouraged to reuse your own containers, as it also saves time and money in the future.

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.

I found it in the dumpsters behind the colorful houses. It’s a small glass jar. I liked its shape. I’m going to use it to hold bobby pins. 

I felt like a bird hunting. I think that might sound crazy, but that’s what I felt like. And it was fun. But I also didn’t want anyone to see me. I didn’t want anyone to catch me rummaging through the dumpsters. So I moved quickly. And I didn’t want to leave but I was scared someone would walk by at any moment so I left before I could look through everything. 

A line from Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America by Alex V. Barnard reads, “These corporations promote disposable goods over reusable ones, design rapidly obsolete products, and ensure that repair is more expensive than replacement.” I think this glass container was treated as waste because it was produced to be waste. Waste is necessary for capitalism to function, as Barnard explains, “waste is thus not an ‘externality’ or ‘failure’ of the market but a source of value and driver of production in a capitalist system”. Capitalists profit off of disposable products. Although this glass jar is reusable, it is more profitable when thought of and treated as disposable. So we as consumers have been trained to view it as such.

I retrieved a red ribbon from a chocolate box in the recycling. I was going to throw something away in my common room with my mom and when I looked in I saw a red ribbon. I was initially just going to throw the red ribbon away because I often have a hard time keeping something from the trash, but this was from a recycling bin, and seemed really clean. I put it in my pocket and continued on with my day, until later that evening I gave it to my cat. My cat, Perron, loves ribbons and plays with toys all the time. When he saw it, it was instant excitement. I don’t have a picture because I don’t know where he has put it. I think back on it now and I’m glad I rescued the ribbon. It is going to bring lots of joy to Perron, and that in turn brings me joy. I know this object was thrown away because it was packaging, and no one keeps packaging anymore. I do know if it was mine from the get go, the ribbon would have been a no brainer. I don’t know if people should have treated it differently just because I would, doesn’t mean everyone should.