Disposability – prompt

Choose something you regularly interact with that is typically considered to be disposable. (Include a photo if possible.) What makes us able to think of this object ‘disposable?’ Think about the material aspects of the object (how it is constructed), the social/cultural aspects (such as meanings, goals, and symbols the object represents), and the infrastructural connections (where it likely came from and where it will likely go).

Readings this week:

Stouffer, Lloyd. “Plastics Packaging: Today and Tomorrow.” Chicago: The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., 1963.

Acaroglu, Leyla. “Design for Disposability.” Disruptive Design (blog), January 3, 2018. https://medium.com/disruptive-design/design-for-disposability-962647cbcbb0.

Hawkins, Gay. “Disposability.” Discard Studies, May 21, 2019. https://discardstudies.com/2019/05/21/disposability/.

Wright, Melissa W. 2006. Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New York, NY: Routledge. (Intro 1-6, Ch 2 23-44)

CAN you see the treasure

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.

An Exercise in Validating Laziness

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.

Disposal of Difficult Waste

Every year or so my family tends to have accumulated a collection of waste that can not be thrown out in the normal trash and recycling bins. Things like old paint cans, electronics, scrap wood, and small furniture items are a bit difficult to dispose of, and while it is easy to get rid of furniture during bulk trash pick up month, the other things need to be taken to our local transfer station, which is luckily only a few minutes from my house. Using the transfer station puts a little more responsibility on us as we need to make sure what we’re bringing there is accepted, and we need to make sure what we are bringing is separated as needed before we get there. In addition, it should also be light/small enough that machinery isn’t needed in order to put it in the bins (unless the workers are aware and prepared for what you’re bringing). Using the past summer as an example, I had to bring two boxes of old paint cans, three broken computers, and a box of scrap wood to the station. Before leaving, I made sure the items were organized in my car so that it would be quick and easy to dispose of them, and I also removed staples and nails from the wood in case metal and wood needed to be separated. When I got there, it was my responsibility to put the waste into the correct locations. The waste was my responsibility up until I left the facility, and from there, it became the responsibility of the waste workers to transport and process the waste. While I don’t know a lot about how waste is processed in waste facilities, I imagine the wood is turned into woodchips, mulch, or shavings in order to give it another use, and metal is salvaged and melted down.

Moore’s conceptualizations

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. 

Hidden Waste

Storage closets. There’s a closet behind the lecture hall in FPH filled with books, old newspapers, tapes, and electronics. A layer of dust covers everything. Closets are made to hide what is inside them. Of course closets usually hold things that aren’t considered waste but they still work to supporate. All this stuff, because it’s been put in an accessible place, because no one knows about it, because it’s behind unmarked doors, has sorta become waste. No one uses it, it rots in cardboard boxes, it gathers dust. And it is only allowed to exist in this state because it is kept out of sight. Distance, even on this small scale of a closet and its forgotten contents, is a work of distance.

Distance is a tool used by the oppressor. That’s why they work so hard to maintain it. The people with power have separated themselves from the rest of the world. The pain created by the same systems they benefit from has been made invisible to them. Distance makes the whole system possible. We get closer and closer to waste the more we are considered waste ourselves within the hierarchy. 

Personal responsibility

Food waste. I think food waste is a category of waste that I feel most personally responsible for. I try hard not to waste food, and I feel like a shit bag everytime I do. I feel bad when I go to a restaurant and the table next to me is full of the scraps of another person’s meal, and I’m not allowed to  eat it, I have to let the waiter take it away and throw it in the trash. And then I have to order my own food, when I would have been fine with the food from another person’s table. My uneaten food becomes someone else’s responsibility the second it is out of my sight. It shouldn’t be like that. I don’t want to think like that. I’m a damn sheep in an oppressive system! A sheep! And I hate it! I don’t know who deals with my food waste next, and I think that has been deliberately done. Look what individualism has done to us. Individuality is a made up idea that does not exist in nature. Separation is how they control us. They have stolen us from each other! And then they pretend we have a choice. If it isn’t accessible to the BIPOC community, to the poor, or the disabled, then it’s not real. They have forced me into complacency! I will never forgive them for it.

Michael F. Maniates writes “When responsibility for environmental problems is individualized, there is little room to ponder institutions, the nature and exercise of political power, or ways of collectively changing the distribution of power and influence in society”. They make it inescapable. Only those with privilege can separate themself.

Moore

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? 

Pumpkin: A Filthy Out of Place Resource

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.  

 

 

Distanced from Waste

For this blog post I am choosing Target in the Hadley Mall. Target is a store that I hope everyone is familiar with, and they choose to distance themselves from waste as much as possible. Have you ever thought about all the packaging waste and the plastics that are thrown out with products all coming from one store. They don’t want you to think too hard about all the plastic sheetings, and the tear away strips and so much more that is on food, toys, and everything else that is packaged. They use paper bags which is a subtle way to nod towards being Green, yet they are covered in plastic in the rest of the store. Have you ever bought a Disney Doorables, the thing is filled with plastic. The box is made of tearaway cardboard that is covered in a thin sheet of plastic. Inside the cardboard there is a plastic tray filled with 7-9 plastic baggies, containing the toys. That is an obscene amount of waste for 7 tiny toys and yet no one thinks about it because Target has distanced themselves from waste.