I have noticed that in America people shop on Amazon a lot. The packages come in big boxes sometimes, boxes which get wasted. When people unbox their purchases, most of the time they don’t recycle them. Some boxes are big and don’t fit into the recycle bin even if they do. I have seen people leave boxes outside. When it ruins, it destroys the boxes and goes to waste.

 

We usually don’t sort our trash out and just dump it into dumpsters. The moment people take their trash out and throw it into the dumpsters it is no longer their responsibility. It becomes someone else responsibility.

 

Before taking this class and discussing waste items I have never thought about being responsible for my trash or items that go to waste. Discussing waste and reading about San Man I realized how difficult it is for people who take the trash out and keep the environment clean.

 

in Kabul, where I lived for 20 years. There is trash everywhere. The entire city is a gigantic dumpster. The municipality tried to get people to take their trash out properly, but people never listen to them “our city is our home, keeping our city clean, means keeping our home clean.” It is their slogan. But people leave their crash on the street all the all.  Eating food and throwing trash out of a car window is a usual thing that some people do.

 

I believe taking care of my crash is my responsibility until I take it out. Everyone should take their trash out properly. Seal the bags, and they should be left in front of the dumpster. Leaving broken glasses could be very dangerous for those taking the trash out. I don’t know whose responsibility it becomes when we take the trash out. But their job is very important. If people don’t do this hard job, the city will look ugly and smell horrible. And that can the source of many diseases.

Ferrets, rats, both produce an impressive amount of soiled bedding and toys that smells completely awful if not cleaned up fast enough. Besides the bedding and toys, the debris and trash of dug out food and stuffing can be left all over the ground and it can pile up very quickly. My responsibility to not only myself, my peers and my furbutts is to make sure that I have a cleaned area that is sanitized. To my animals, I want them to be comfortable and keep them healthy. To my peers I want to make sure that they aren’t bothered by the smell or the worry of my critters getting out and getting into other’s personal items (they won’t, I’m very paranoid about it so I always check before I leave if there is any possibility that they could get out). I make sure when I clean up after them that I use a limited number of bags, deep cleaning to keep up for the next few days and then I’ll take the trash out to the dumpster outside of the dorm and throw it into the proper bin. My responsibility is to make sure that not only have I cleaned well, but that’s safe to not spill out on some poor soul. I believe my responsibility ends once I’ve checked all my marks. Now what happens to the poop-bag, I am not totally sure other than it will probably end up in some garbage dump, rotting with other trash and more than likely other poop-bags from my bi-weekly clean-ups. I only hope that the bags never rip, I have to clean it, and I know the pain of when the bedding drops and it’s just gross. To sum up this long-winded speech: my responsibility is to make whoever clears the dumps easier. The irony is that I have to constantly do this, so I’m still adding onto the waste, however I don’t think there’s a compost around here where I could donate a very constant stream of fertilizer.

The form of waste I am choosing is fabric waste, which I wrote my first blog post about. I consider it my responsibility to try to use as much of the fabric as I possibly can. It becomes someone else’s responsibility when I am unable or unwilling to try to use it anymore and it moves from my scrap container to the trash. Based on the way our waste systems are set up, this is the logical division, but I think with a change in what I’m doing, this division could potentially be deemed unnecessary. I could either keep all fabric scraps until I am able to do something with them, or I could stop doing things that create fabric scraps. This could look like a couple of things; I could stop sewing and doing projects with fabric, or I could ensure that none of the projects I do create any scraps. 

I don’t know the details of who deals with the waste after the people that collect it or how it’s dealt with. I would guess that if it’s specifically textile waste, as described in the reading by Gregson et al. it would be sorted into various categories. On the occasions that I do throw out fabric, it just goes into the general garbage. I do not know if that gets sorted or what exactly happens to it after it’s picked up.

For this week’s blog post I will be building upon the topic of food waste from the Conceptualizing Waste prompt. When dealing with food waste I believe there is a lot that is my responsibility, largely because of the unique place food holds in human society which is quite different from other forms of waste. I think this for two reasons, one is that food is made of organic matter and two it’s an essential commodity that has to be produced. I think my responsibility for my food waste starts when I am buying food. It’s on me to think about am I really going to eat this? Cook this recipe? Am I getting sick of this food? In the past how often have I bought this and ended up never eating it. I know that I am someone who should not go into a store on an empty stomach because I buy way more food and often unhealthy products that I don’t want around. So right there cutting back on the volume of food is important in my responsibility with food. If I am in the dining hall being conscious of how much food/what food I put on my plate is important, if people only had crumbs/very little to scrape into the “food waste” bin the DC would not have much to throw out at all. 

Prior to this class if you were to ask me when the waste I produce is no longer my responsibility I would have probably said when whoever picks up my food waste and takes it away is the moment it is no longer on me. Today I believe that line is a little blurry. I think that I will always be responsible for the making of the waste, but will say it’s when someone else who picks it up they are physically responsible for taking it wherever it goes, but definitely not for the production of it. I am not sure if it is an appropriate division of labor, but it is the only one that makes the most sense. I do not know what the work life of whoever picks it up. I imagine that it is someone who wakes up early (like the Pedal People) around 4:30/5:00 in the morning or works throughout the night. I imagine they see a plethora of oddities in their everyday trash pickup and items that should have been recycled. I would guess that they don’t feel respected by the community that they serve, that they could possibly feel looked down upon, especially if they are in a more affluent area such as where I live (Southborough MA) where their job can be seen as not respectable. Since I live in a boarding school our trash is put into a trash compactor which I believe goes straight to a dump/landfill afterwards. They might even just collect trash compactors from institutions like the one I live at, Fay is another boarding school right next to mine to which I imagine they also have a trash compactor that gets taken away for them. Possibly by the same sanitation workers? 

The readings for the last week and a half connect issues of personal responsibility for environmental issues (like waste) with who does the work with dealing with it (you, waste haulers, sorters, etc). This week, choose a specific form of waste. (This could build off of one of your previous posts, or it could be something new.) When dealing with this waste, what do you consider to be your responsibility? What/where/when is the point where it becomes someone else’s responsibility? Do you believe this is an appropriate point to mark this division of labor, and why? Do you know who deals with this waste next, and what their work is like? If you do, briefly describe it, and if you don’t know, what do you imagine their work to be like?

Readings from this week:

Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics 1, no. 3 (2001): 31–52.

Nagle, Robin. “You are a San Man” and “We Eat Our Own.” In Picking Up: On the Streets and behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Gregson, Nicky, Mike Crang, Julie Botticello, Melania Calestani, and Anna Krzywoszynska. (2014). “Doing the ‘Dirty Work’ of the Green Economy: Resource Recovery and Migrant Labour in the EU.” European Urban and Regional Studies, 23:4, 541-555.

Tupelo, Ethan. “Revaluing Capitalist Waste Through Worker Ownership.” In Debris of Progress: A Political Ethnography of Critical Infrastructure. University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2022.