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.
Matter out of place
Matter out of place goes into our disgust of things when they are in the wrong place. This mainly covers trash and disposable products. When trash is in the trashcan it doesn’t bother us, but when we can see it pouring out of the trashcan or on the ground. We have been taught to stay away from trash because it can carry bacteria. Matter out of place really goes into the factor of if we can’t see it then it’s not a problem. Trash in landfills will not be a problem for us because they are meant to be there. Dumpsters are hidden around the back of stores to hide garbage from the shoppers eyes. This class went over what we usually don’t think about and let our primal emotions of disgust take over but instead it makes us think about what really goes into everything even something as simple as a dirty napkin
Hoarding and Cleaning
Hoarding and Cleaning are very different but are very much the same in the fact that they can become unhealthy when overly done. Hoarding can save someone sometime but then inconvenience them the same day and cleaning can just be summed up as moving the waste somewhere else. Diagnosing someone as a packrat or a hoarder is hard to do due to the vagueness of the description of it. What I learned from this class is that you cannot stop yourself from cleaning or somewhat hoarding only just to recognize it when it becomes a bit too much and too think about what really goes into cleaning and hoarding of products and too think outside of what happens to it outside of our lives.
Pollution
Pollution is not something I usually think about in my daily life except for my daily routine of taking out trash and recycling. But in our everyday lives we need to travel farther and farther distances meaning the use of transportation that burns fuel and puts carbon into the air. To avoid this is hard without inconveniencing ones self for the long distance to travel. Public transit is the usual answer though the safety of public transit is questionable along with the lack of advancement for the every mans bus. To change this would be make our life styles very different and it will be a shock for a while. To eliminate pollution entirely is almost impossible but limiting it is closer and with new cars and advancements the limiting factor doesn’t seem too far away.
Pollution
Ever since I was a kid, I remember the beach clean-up commercials plastered across my television screen begging people to join in on community clean-up projects. Despite not actually living near a beach, I did have my fair share of encounters with littering in outdoor spaces. My experience was located on hiking trails. Class conversations over whether or not dirt is dirty make me think of how even if we say no, the ways our actions may say yes. Within these two spaces, people physically reveal more of themselves at beaches. For example, we often see people in bathing suits and even nude beaches exist. While on hiking trails, even in hot weather, most people are spotted wearing shorts and a T-shirt. While the beach attire is because of tanning and swimming opportunities, water sources on trails are sometimes present, and the ocean isn’t exactly known for being the cleanest water source. I do feel sand and dirt are similar in the sense of something that is fine when people are the ones engaging with it, but neither are things people like entering their own personal spaces. Another thing that comes to mind is the idea of being visible to others and how that affects people’s actions. For example, beaches are typically very open and for extended periods of time, you could be just feet away from multiple groups of people. While seeing someone on a hike is met with a brief hello. Even if one is not interacting with anyone else at the beach, one’s proximity to them still influences how one acts. Oftentimes when I have been on hikes, the further along you are on the trail, the more trash I find. I don’t quite understand why this is. My guess has always been that since one is deeper into the woods, people feel there is more anonymity and therefore less accountability needed to be taken. Something about the lower chance of being watched or caught is something that I’d say inspires questionable behaviors amongst humanity as a whole, especially when it comes to how we treat spaces. Overall, examining how specifically beaches and hiking trails are treated as potential sites for pollution gives me insight into how I interact with these spaces and wanting to challenge those ways.
Pollution – prompt
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?
Readings this week:
(May also be worth revisiting Moore’s conceptualizing waste chart from a few weeks ago, especially the concept that treat waste as something that can be managed and contained, versus avoided at all costs.)
Liboiron, Max. “Land, Nature, Resource, Property.” In Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021, 39-79.
National Association for PET Container Resources. “Report on Postconsumer PET Container Recycling Activity in 2017,” November 15, 2018. https://napcor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/NAPCOR_2017RateReport_FINAL_rev.pdf. (Focus primarily on the graphs on pages 4 and 13)
MacBride, Samantha. “Does Recycling Actually Conserve or Preserve Things?” Discard Studies (blog), February 11, 2019. https://discardstudies.com/2019/02/11/12755/.
Katz, Cheryl. “Piling Up: How China’s Ban on Importing Waste Has Stalled Global Recycling.” Yale E360. Accessed December 30, 2019. https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-importing-waste-has-stalled-global-recycling.
Schlossberg, Tala, and Nayeema Raza. “Opinion | The Great Recycling Con.” The New York Times , December 9, 2019, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/recycling-myths.html
John Oliver on plastics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
Dirt
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.
Disposability
Receipts are what came to my mind when I was asked to pick something disposable. You know when you go to cvs and they give you the miles of receipts? The ones that always end up forgotten in a pocket or crumpled and thrown on a dresser. It’s more trees and more landfill waste in a day and age where everything’s going digital. A lot more stores are offering a digital option but I wish it was more common. Or they could be shortened and cut out all the unnecessary ads and coupons that just get you to buy more. The worst part about them though is that they are printed on a paper that can only be thrown out. There is never another use for a receipt other then for it to be thrown out. Continue reading
disposable
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.
disposable forks
The object I’m choosing is a plastic fork. The object to us is supposed to be a single use throw away plastic. Plastic forks aren’t meant to be washed and taken care of. They need to be used and tossed, that way people buy more forks (Capitalist ideal) and you don’t need to do dishes (Normal thinking). A plastic fork is of course made of plastic, typically in a white or black color, but sometimes like at a birthday party they might come in a fun rainbow variant, like a yellow or a blue. Plastic forks tend to have a connection to events like parties or get-togethers, because you have lots of people and may not have that many utensils. Instead you buy the plastic forks, people use them and then throw them out so you don’t have to wash tons of dishes, it’s there to save you manual labor. Most plastic forks probably end up in a landfill, or in the woods somewhere, sometimes in a park where a child’s birthday party was held. Wherever they go it isn’t to be used again.