I have seen various methods of disposability through living in 3 states: Ohio, Idaho, Maine and now an honorary 4th, Massachusetts. In Ohio there used to be family waste help where families would go to the dump and help out others by taking their trash with them, usually other friends and family members. There used to be, possibly still is a small company that would use regular pick-up work trucks to gather waste and make various runs to waste drop offs. More places in Ohio, at least in Wooster have become much more commercialized so bigger, international companies are becoming more popular and frequent. Idaho is interesting, how well the job was done depended on the truck and the people on shift. More times than others the garbage would be picked up no problem, others there would be some picked up and other parts and bags left if behind the bins or near them but not inside the bins. It was interesting, however that didn’t happen too often. Maine, however, my family takes the trash to the local dump site and recycling plant or stations around the area. My best experience with Massachusetts is the dorm dumpsters, very interesting things those dumpsters are. Not always horrible, but sometimes when it rains or there are more bags than normal, I’m convinced they become their own habitats.
Category: Disposability
Disposable Coffee Cups
Coming from a country where human beings get butchered on daily bases, dealing with Trash or recycling is never on top of our list. I never thought of disposable objects until I moved to American. It never occurred to me to think about it. I have been in this country. “Well, physically” for over year, but there is still a lot to learn. Waste, and recycle are almost new words to me. I know the meaning them, but it is hard to implement them on day-to-day life.
I thought about this prompt a lot. I looked around and paid attention to my surroundings. I tried to find an object that I can justify is as a “disposable object”. But it was a difficult task to get done. In Afghanistan, we barely use disposable objects. It is new to us, and I even don’t know how to translate “disposable” in my own language.
After looking at different things, I come across disposable coffee cups “made from paper and corn,” it says. “100 per cent compossible.” Coffee cup is one of the objects that often interact with and consider disposable.
International Coffee Agreement Annually, roughly 600 billion paper and plastic cups are used worldwide. it’s estimated that Americans throw away more than 50 billion cups every year. Starbucks alone is responsible for roughly 7 billion cups a year.
Disposable coffee cups are made with a range of materials. Even if the cups aren’t made with the environmental villain Styrofoam, paper cups are often lined with equally problematic plastics.
Disposable coffee cups typically have a plastic resin, or polyethylene, lining. Polyethylene is a petroleum-based plastic, requiring thousands of barrels of oil to line our paper cups every single year.
I internet search shows that coffee cups are able to contain hot liquids, because they’re typically made with plastic-lined paper.
Plastic Periods
I regularly interact with single-use period products. They are, along with other disposable period products, considered single-use because the majority of them are no longer effective after one use. Single-use period disks are an exception to this, because they are made of plastic and collect menstrual fluid rather than absorb it, and could probably be washed and reused a few times, although it is not suggested on the packaging. Pads and tampons absorb menstrual fluid and cannot be reused. Pads are made of absorbent material with a sticky plastic backing and are individually wrapped in plastic. Tampons are also made of absorbent material and most come with two-part applicators, typically made of plastic, although there are also cardboard ones, and are also wrapped in plastic. All of these are sold wrapped in plastic, in boxes, or in bags with multiple individually wrapped products.
Periods have been stigmatized for a long time, and that is reflected in period products. Things are individually wrapped for both sanitary reasons and ‘privacy’ reasons. The individual wrapping allows the used item to be wrapped before being thrown away.
Used pads and tampons are thrown in the trash and end up where the trash is taken. Although plastic applicators may be recyclable, it seems unlikely that they would actually be recycled for sanitary reasons.
Face Masks
Face masks are an object that has existed since the 1920s, used primarily by those in medical professions. As we all know the use of surgical and Kn95 masks has exploded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Covid the disposable market has exploded to a 38.9 billion dollar business in 2021. With it everyone is using them and have since entered the public mind as a common disposable item along with wrappers, paper, packaging, etc. Face masks are mostly made of cotton and polymers (which contain plastic). Both of these materials we are very used to throwing away. Globally a total of 129 billion are used every month and 3.4 billion are thrown away daily. A large part of the reason why we think of them as disposable is because that is what we have been told, to only use them a certain amount of times and they lose their effectiveness. In our minds masks are associated with protecting ourselves and others from COVID, it’s quite different from many other disposable products in the way it’s about a public health concern rather than convenience. In reality these masks went from having an association with medical professionals to being a symbol of one of the worst pandemics in history and one of the most important events of the 21st century. The connection is instant between the two. It is now a very common occurrence for people to see face masks littering parking lots as a plastic bag or plastic water bottle would. At Hampshire I would say I see them more often than any other type of waste littered. They are now sharing the same fate as many other waste items, they are being found in the ocean and are contributing to micro-plastic pollution. I doubt the widespread use of masks will be going down in coming years, due to the issue of COVID, but also because of how effective they’ve proven to be against airborne disease.
Disposability prompt
Choose a type of object that you regularly interact with typically considered to be disposable. (Include a photo if possible.) What makes us able to think of this object ‘disposable?’ Be sure to address at least 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
Liboiron, Max. How Plastic is a function of colonialism. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-plastic-is-a-function-of-colonialism