I like to collage. I enjoy creating art, and because of this, I often end up with some waste after making my art. It makes sense that art creation produces waste, as you can’t use all the materials. Despite trying to minimize waste, there’s always some leftover. Since much of my journaling and collaging involve found materials, I tend to keep small scraps, even if I don’t have a specific purpose for them yet.

Another type of art waste I generate is paint water. I didn’t know for a while that it shouldn’t be poured down the drain. Acrylic paint water, when left to dry in a bucket, allows the water to evaporate, leaving behind the dried acrylic or other medium used. I only made the connection with the name “acrylic” later on.

When it comes to watercolors, unless they are sparkly, I usually pour them down the drain, even though I know I shouldn’t. The reason is that there’s a cat in my house, and I don’t want him to drink it and get sick. While I use him as an excuse, I know that it’s not the best practice. I might be in trouble if this pollution were completely prohibited, but it could be a good motivator to set up a system where I’m not just pouring it down the drain and leaching harmful materials into our water.

Every three weeks I throw an empty pack of birth control pills in the trash. From this an archaeologist would probably assume a few things right away: that I am sexual active and probably straight. Neither of these things are true but because they are the main purposes of this refuse, they are easy assumptions to make. The fact that these pills only have three weeks instead of four might drive them into more accurate information. It would be interesting to see if there have been any strides made in afab reproductive health, to see if maybe upon further inspection they would know exactly why I take them and think how primitive our science is and there is something 1000 that is much more affective than disrupting natural bodily function. In that case they would be able to tell that in this post roe era there is very little being done to protect women and afab bodies. I hope they would think it is foolish how we treat half a species as disposable. Even if I don’t use birth control for its intended purpose, I think they would know that as afab bodies it is easier to guess because the actual diagnosis process is extremely invasive because no one is doing the research to find an easier and less invasive way of doing it. I hope they know that I throw the pack away while there is a sign outside my dorm telling people not to let doctors gaslight them into thinking there isn’t a problem. I hope that when they see three empty line of pills that there was a problem and I hope they have fixed it by then.

I use a lot of yarn and other fibers. It would be really interesting to see the acrylic yarn I use turned into new yarn or stuffing for other projects I work on. It wouldn’t take much to make this work because yarn can be broken down and turned into new fiber pretty easily. It would require fiber artists to send their scraps back to yarn companies which would require all the colors to be mixed up. Though they would need to be separated by type because specialty yarns probably couldn’t be recycled in the same manor. With normal acrylic fiber it would just take the separation of those fibers, possibly the bleaching and dying, the washing, and then re–spinning to turn them into new yarn.   

Waste often conceals a narrative about social norms and power dynamics that we tend to ignore. It’s mixed in with the leftover odds and ends from our daily lives that we toss aside and hope to never have to see or speak of again. This mundane seeming action of throwing something out is far more complex then surface levels show. One big example of this that we talked about last class is the use of it in protests. Activists block the street with garbage or stage disruptive protests that bring attention to trash and the trash crisis. Seemingly one of the easiest ways to get attention as no one can ever fully ignore piles of stinky in your face garbage. Police use the disorganization of waste in less marginalized communities that don’t have the money as  an excuse to crack down twice as hard on the community. Justifying their actions by saying that these areas are disorderly due to their waste and therefore they are in the right for heightened surveillance and control.

It’s a harsh reminder that even in the seemingly mundane normal actions, power dynamics are hard at work shaping our perceptions and interactions in ways you might not fully be aware of.

I was thinking about this prompt a lot and trying to figure out what waste I take for granted when it comes to pollution and having an effect on the environment. Break was the needed inspiration for this post.

Over thanksgiving break my phone decided to not charge anymore (among other small problems) and I decided it was finally time to upgrade. In this process I was handed back my old now useless phone which I then added to my parents graveyard of dead devices waiting for proper disposal. This is a process I have done several times in my life by now and often without thought. We use them and use them until all the battery life is drained from them and they are reverted back to useless scraps of metal, tossed aside for the new one. It’s a process of mass production and mass consumption that leaves a massive rarely talked about carbon footprint. It’s deemed a necessary item and small/harmless enough not to make a big difference but once taken to a larger worldwide scale creates a big impact.  If I was to be on my phone less and use it for things I deem important or trade it in for say a flip phone which only has the basics perhaps that would make a difference. Unfortunately with it being a necessary item in the common day to day life it seems impossible we will get out of the trap of mass producing.

Write about one of your regular activities in which some amount of pollution is an assumed component, but perhaps rarely directly discussed.  (This can be a waste practice you have already written about that you want to reexamine from this perspective, or something new.)  If we moved from accepting some amount of this kind of pollution to prohibiting this pollution entirely, would your actions be possible?  How would they change?

In some beaches across the world trash from all over wash up on their shore. Beaches are meant for swimming and having a nice fun day In the sun. With the overload of trash, there is no way to enjoy the sand and the water may be filled with a bunch of contaminates. Since most of the trash washes up in countries across the world, the USA places trash in the ocean to get rid of it. By doing that, they are making it someone else’s problem. Just because its placed in the ocean doesn’t mean it will stay there forever. Water flows and trash happens to float a shore and also trap and kill animals in the sea. Image living in those areas, that causes frustrations and distress among citizens because they didn’t ask for it to come to their homeland so why don’t other countries dispose their trash properly.

When dealing with syringes you need to be very careful how you dispose of them, I personally make sure every needle is bent after use, and then i put them in the sharps container. It becomes someone else’s responsibility to take care of it when I sneak my sharps container into the hospital. I drop off all of my needles in their containers because there isn’t an safe/easy way for me to dispose of them. I have no idea what happens next to be completely honest, but I assume it has something to do with melting the needles down and dumping the rest.

The object I typically interact with that is considered disposable is glass jars from pickles/jellies. People generally think of this object as disposable because of the super sticky label attached to it. I honestly think that is a bullshit excuse for people to just throw it away. You likely could peel the label off, if not that, scrub it off, if not that burn it off, and then scrub it off. Its not like you are gonna melt the glass with a lighter. After that you have a reusable cup or container for your food or herbs. Rather than letting it get crushed and thrown into a landfill, I’d personally rather reuse the glass jar instead of letting it go to waste.

Shit, whether you love it or not, is always around. The history of feces goes back as far as life on Earth itself. Every living creature, no matter how big or small, produces some form of waste. Surprisingly, feces has a range of uses. I remember a scene from the movie “Kickass” where they made explosives from manure. Initially, it seemed funny, but it’s a real thing. Personally, I’d rather use it for gardening, but some people have different ideas. In essence, the long-standing presence and adaptability of feces in the history of life highlight its constant nature and its diverse utility. Whether you find it interesting or not, feces have a consistent role in the natural world, and their uses vary widely, encompassing both humor and practicality. Its just a shame that people use it to harm others.