Maine has areas that are little/medium pop-ups near trash cans near more popular businesses and especially in restaurants that match that of the campus dumpsters, and always in various places when it’s a big event going on or a market pop-up like the weekly flea market or trunk and treat areas. This I’ve seen mostly occurs in Augusta, Portland and more of the touristy type of cities. Towns like Topsham, Lewiston, Brunswick, all of them have smaller versions that vary from place to place. Some weeks it’s the Wendy’s, other times it’s near the Aroma Joe’s, or Starbucks. It’s like a rotation of waste, but the weekends are always the busiest, and dirtiest. Lines go out into the streets, people piling inside the building and demanding orders, I haven’t seen my town on Black Friday or during the discount week, but I am afraid to which is why I will be becoming a hermit again and staying in my designated pie-coma spot. Christmas, trash is stuffed like a kid trying to make it look like they cleaned their room by hiding everything under their bed, summers kick up as well, fall not so much. Depending on the weather, the amount of people, sometimes that waste will be there for days, maybe a week if in a not-so popular area, though I haven’t seen much of that. It’s an interesting hidden, yet not hidden shame, not if you look and a lot of people don’t even if they claim they do.
Idaho vs. Maine
The highways and freeways of Idaho depending on the areas, are filthy. Trash, tires, broken car bits, dead animals, shoes, bags, a mattress, a toy baby stroller, all interesting things to see on the side of the road. There are signs that say “fine for littering, minimum $200” or somewhat depending on how populated and tourist based the area is. Sometimes Idaho feels like only certain areas stay clean and the rest are free-for-alls that get cleaned up eventually or will be there for a few years and become unspoken land markers. Maine, however, does not tolerate trash on the sides of the road, in fact I’ve seen multiple people pull over and start cleaning trash into bags and then putting them in their cars to take away and dispose somewhere else. Usually, it’s vehicular crashes that takes a bit to get cleaned up, especially the tire bits, but they do get cleaned. I think it’s interesting and speaks about both areas characters.
Where does it go?
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.
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
Disposability
We regularly interact with disposable paper, and paper waste is a severe problem in many industries and offices because of printing mistakes, junk mail, billings, and packaging, paper may comprise a company’s total waste. An average office employee would be using about 10,000 sheets of paper in a year. In addition to paper used for printing, companies also consume other paper products, such as cardboard, envelopes, and wrappers, to name a few. From torn paper to used wrappers, it is no wonder that a third of all litter is paper products. Littering can make an area entirely unattractive for tourists and business owners. Furthermore, they attract insects and rodents, turning an area into a perfect breeding ground for various diseases. People trading industrial wood in the world reserved for pulp and paper industries, which produce office paper, tissue, and paper-based packaging.
Environmental Effects of Paper Waste
Deforestation is the primary effect of our mindless use of paper. Conservation groups have made admirable headway in protecting ecologically rich forests and limiting commercial access. This is a great progress for mankind! Just imagine how long a tree will grow to its full size…. We are only just realizing the wasted use of our trees – trees that give off oxygen and protect the planet from further Global Warming. Deforestation is detrimental to the ecosystem as loss of habitat can lead to flora and fauna extinction. While many industries have committed to reforestation projects, these artificial forests are often unsustainable and unable to support biodiversity.
Easy Ways to Reduce Paper Waste and Pollution
- Recycle all your paper waste
- Reduce the use of paper cups and disposable paper plates by keeping reusable items in the office pantry.
- Encourage your officemates and friends to recycle their papers by putting them in recycling bins.
- In the office, reuse paper. If you’ve only used one side, for example, collect them instead of throwing them away. You can bind these sheets and make a notebook using the other side. This small effort reduces paper waste.
An old hoodie
At the bottom of my drawers, there is an old hoodie that sits, folded and clean. Every morning my hand passes over it as I choose something else. A part of my brain considers it waste, it seems wrong, it seems out of place. It’s a perfectly fine hoodie, comfortable with no damage, but my mind itself has created this barrier to consider it as waste, my brain calls it a “matter out of place,” but I can’t bring myself to throw it away or even donate it. I think my brain likes having this waste in my room, and if I throw it out, I’ll just create another mental barrier for another piece of clothing, and that will become waste.
Merrill Dumpsters
The Merrill dumpsters are going to be the focus of my blog post today. I am not exactly sure how these operate, but I would guess they are the final destination for all the waste produced from the Merrill common rooms/kitchens, the smaller trash/recycling cans outside in the front, waste from the bathrooms, and students rooms. Definitely a core reason my dorm stays as clean as it is. Their location I believe is very specific for quick disposal and keeping it hidden. There are two ways for one to see the trash and recycling dumpsters, one is that they are doing laundry in the basement or if they walk to the back of Merril, which for the most part is very unlikely unless your maintenance. This location I feel is very much designed to be kept out of sight and out of mind, they are also surrounded on three sides by a wooden and metal fence, which further cements the idea of wanting them to be hidden from people. In addition there is a road that goes right up to it, designed for efficient disposal. I am not sure whether that road was always there for taking our waste away, but it does go right up to it, giving the impression that it was made for that. In addition to it being out of sight of the majority of the Hampshire population it is the closest they can have it to the woods, a place that we don’t consider to be our living space. We don’t bat an eye with them being in such a secluded location, but it would be much different if we put them in front of Merrill by the entrance where the smaller trash and recycling are currently. Even if it did not smell, people would still be questioning why it is placed there. However I do believe the current placement of the dumpsters is symbolic of what we as a society view waste as. Being pushed to the sidelines and further being hidden, kept just far enough away from our living space, but not really that far. Kind of like how there are dumps not far outside of towns/cities and most people would not know. Either because it’s blocked by barriers like trees or it looks like a hill covered in grass (I can think of several in Massachusetts that I didn’t know were dumps).
