Recycling Reconsidered

Recycling Reconsidered PDF Author: Samantha Macbride
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262297663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
How the success and popularity of recycling has diverted attention from the steep environmental costs of manufacturing the goods we consume and discard. Recycling is widely celebrated as an environmental success story. The accomplishments of the recycling movement can be seen in municipal practice, a thriving private recycling industry, and widespread public support and participation. In the United States, more people recycle than vote. But, as Samantha MacBride points out in this book, the goals of recycling—saving the earth (and trees), conserving resources, and greening the economy—are still far from being realized. The vast majority of solid wastes are still burned or buried. MacBride argues that, since the emergence of the recycling movement in 1970, manufacturers of products that end up in waste have successfully prevented the implementation of more onerous, yet far more effective, forms of sustainable waste policy. Recycling as we know it today generates the illusion of progress while allowing industry to maintain the status quo and place responsibility on consumers and local government. MacBride offers a series of case studies in recycling that pose provocative questions about whether the current ways we deal with waste are really the best ways to bring about real sustainability and environmental justice. She does not aim to debunk or discourage recycling but to help us think beyond recycling as it is today.

Recycling Reconsidered

Recycling Reconsidered PDF Author: Samantha Macbride
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262297663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
How the success and popularity of recycling has diverted attention from the steep environmental costs of manufacturing the goods we consume and discard. Recycling is widely celebrated as an environmental success story. The accomplishments of the recycling movement can be seen in municipal practice, a thriving private recycling industry, and widespread public support and participation. In the United States, more people recycle than vote. But, as Samantha MacBride points out in this book, the goals of recycling—saving the earth (and trees), conserving resources, and greening the economy—are still far from being realized. The vast majority of solid wastes are still burned or buried. MacBride argues that, since the emergence of the recycling movement in 1970, manufacturers of products that end up in waste have successfully prevented the implementation of more onerous, yet far more effective, forms of sustainable waste policy. Recycling as we know it today generates the illusion of progress while allowing industry to maintain the status quo and place responsibility on consumers and local government. MacBride offers a series of case studies in recycling that pose provocative questions about whether the current ways we deal with waste are really the best ways to bring about real sustainability and environmental justice. She does not aim to debunk or discourage recycling but to help us think beyond recycling as it is today.

Discard Studies

Discard Studies PDF Author: Max Liboiron
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262369516
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
An argument that social, political, and economic systems maintain power by discarding certain people, places, and things. Discard studies is an emerging field that looks at waste and wasting broadly construed. Rather than focusing on waste and trash as the primary objects of study, discard studies looks at wider systems of waste and wasting to explore how some materials, practices, regions, and people are valued or devalued, becoming dominant or disposable. In this book, Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky argue that social, political, and economic systems maintain power by discarding certain people, places, and things. They show how the theories and methods of discard studies can be applied in a variety of cases, many of which do not involve waste, trash, or pollution. Liboiron and Lepawsky consider the partiality of knowledge and offer a theory of scale, exploring the myth that most waste is municipal solid waste produced by consumers; discuss peripheries, centers, and power, using content moderation as an example of how dominant systems find ways to discard; and use theories of difference to show that universalism, stereotypes, and inclusion all have politics of discard and even purification—as exemplified in “inclusive” efforts to broaden the Black Lives Matter movement. Finally, they develop a theory of change by considering “wasting well,” outlining techniques, methods, and propositions for a justice-oriented discard studies that keeps power in view.

Recycling Reconsidered

Recycling Reconsidered PDF Author: Samantha MacBride
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262516433
Category : Recycling (Waste, etc.)
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
Recycling is widely celebrated as an environmental success story. The accomplishments of the recycling movement can be seen in municipal practice, a thriving private recycling industry, and widespread public support and participation. In the United States, more people recycle than vote. But, as Samantha MacBride points out in this book, the goals of recycling--saving the earth (and trees), conserving resources, and greening the economy--are still far from being realized. The vast majority of solid wastes are still burned or buried. MacBride argues that, since the emergence of the recycling movement in 1970, manufacturers of products that end up in waste have successfully prevented the implementation of more onerous, yet far more effective, forms of sustainable waste policy. Recycling as we know it today generates the illusion of progress while allowing industry to maintain the status quo and place responsibility on consumers and local government. Most disturbingly, it does so with the strong support of environmental social movements that defend recycling even as they grapple with its shortcomings. MacBride offers a series of case studies in recycling that pose provocative questions about whether the current ways we deal with waste are really the best ways to bring about real sustainability and environmental justice. MacBride does not aim to debunk or discourage recycling but to help us think beyond recycling as it is today. In the name of ecological citizenship, she challenges us to consider larger problems of solid waste, the global range of environmental threats, and policy alternatives that go beyond curbside collection of cans, bottles, and paper.

Resisting Garbage

Resisting Garbage PDF Author: Lily Baum Pollans
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477323708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Resisting Garbage presents a new approach to understanding practices of waste removal and recycling in American cities, one that is grounded in the close observation of case studies while being broadly applicable to many American cities today. Most current waste practices in the United States, Lily Baum Pollans argues, prioritize sanitation and efficiency while allowing limited post-consumer recycling as a way to quell consumers’ environmental anxiety. After setting out the contours of this “weak recycling waste regime,” Pollans zooms in on the very different waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. While Boston’s local politics resulted in a waste-export program with minimal recycling, Seattle created new frameworks for thinking about consumption, disposal, and the roles that local governments and ordinary people can play as partners in a project of resource stewardship. By exploring how these two approaches have played out at the national level, Resisting Garbage provides new avenues for evaluating municipal action and fostering practices that will create environmentally meaningful change.

Waste Trading among Rich Nations

Waste Trading among Rich Nations PDF Author: Kate O'Neill
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263971
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
When most people think of hazardous waste trading, they think of egregious dumping by U.S. and European firms on poor countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. But over 80 percent of the waste trade takes place between industrialized nations and is legal by domestic and international standards. In Waste Trading among Rich Nations, Kate O'Neill asks why some industrialized nations voluntarily import such wastes in the absence of pressing economic need. She focuses on Britain as an importer and Germany as an exporter and also looks at France, Australia, and Japan. According to O'Neill, most important in determining whether an industrialized democracy imports waste are two aspects of its regulatory system. The first is the structure of the regulatory process—how powers and responsibilities are allocated among different agencies and levels of government—and the structure of the hazardous waste disposal industry. The second is what O'Neill calls the "style" of environmental regulation, in particular access to the policy process and mode of implementation. Hazardous waste management is in crisis in most industrialized countries and is becoming increasingly controversial in international negotiations. O'Neill not only examines waste trading empirically but also develops a theoretical model of comparative regulation that can be used to establish links between domestic and international environmental politics.

Canada's Waste Flows

Canada's Waste Flows PDF Author: Myra J. Hird
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228006465
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
From shipments of Canadian waste rotting in developing countries to overflowing landfills and ineffective recycling programs, Canada is facing a waste crisis. Canadians are becoming increasingly aware that waste is an acute environmental and human health issue – and a complex one, the solutions to which are often contradictory. Canada's Waste Flows is an honest look at the production and movement of Canadian waste, from region to region and across the globe, and its consequences. Through a series of timely empirical case studies, the book reveals waste as less of a technological problem and more of a material, economic, political, historical, and cultural concern. Canada's Waste Flows demonstrates that Canadians are misdirecting their attention to post-consumer waste and their responsibility for minimizing it through recycling; waste must be understood as a social justice issue, and in particular as a symptom of ongoing settler colonialism. Through a comparative study of waste management in southern and northern Canadian communities, Myra Hird argues that we will only resolve our waste crisis through democratic engagement. A critical and compelling book that will generate conversation and incite change, Canada's Waste Flows uncovers how Canada's role as a global leader in waste production and export is key to changing Canada's waste future.

Gone Tomorrow

Gone Tomorrow PDF Author: Heather Rogers
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595585729
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A galvanizing exposé” of America’s trash problem from plastic in the ocean to “wasteful packaging, bogus recycling, and flawed landfills and incinerators” (Booklist, starred review). Eat a take-out meal, buy a pair of shoes, or read a newspaper, and you’re soon faced with a bewildering amount of garbage. The United States is the planet’s number-one producer of trash. Each American throws out 4.5 pounds daily. But garbage is also a global problem. Today, the Pacific Ocean contains six times more plastic waste than zooplankton. How did we end up with this much rubbish, and where does it all go? Journalist and filmmaker Heather Rogers answers these questions by taking readers on a grisly and fascinating tour through the underworld of garbage. Gone Tomorrow excavates the history of rubbish handling from the nineteenth century to the present, pinpointing the roots of today’s waste-addicted society. With a “lively authorial voice,” Rogers draws connections between modern industrial production, consumer culture, and our throwaway lifestyle (New York Press). She also investigates the politics of recycling and the export of trash to poor countries, while offering a potent argument for change. “A clear-thinking and peppery writer, Rogers presents a galvanizing exposé of how we became the planet’s trash monsters. . . . [Gone Tomorrow] details everything that is wrong with today’s wasteful packaging, bogus recycling, and flawed landfills and incinerators. . . . Rogers exhibits black-belt precision.” —Booklist, starred review

Aluminum Upcycled

Aluminum Upcycled PDF Author: Carl A. Zimring
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421421860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tracing the benefits—and limitations—of repurposing aluminum. Besides being the right thing to do for Mother Earth, recycling can also make money—particularly when it comes to upcycling, a zero waste practice where discarded materials are fashioned into goods of greater economic or cultural value. In Upcycling Aluminum, Carl A. Zimring explores how the metal’s abundance after World War II—coupled with the significant economic and environmental costs of smelting it from bauxite ore—led to the industrial production of valuable durable goods from salvaged aluminum. Beginning in 1886 with the discovery of how to mass produce aluminum, the book examines the essential part the metal played in early aviation and the world wars, as well as the troubling expansion of aluminum as a material of mass disposal. Recognizing that scrap aluminum was as good as virgin material and much more affordable than newly engineered metal, designers in the postwar era used aluminum to manufacture highly prized artifacts. Zimring takes us on a tour of post-1940s design, examining the use of aluminum in cars, trucks, airplanes, furniture, and musical instruments from 1945 to 2015. By viewing upcycling through the lens of one material, Zimring deepens our understanding of the history of recycling in industrial society. He also provides a historical perspective on contemporary sustainable design practices. Along the way, he challenges common assumptions about upcycling’s merits and adds a new dimension to recycling as a form of environmental absolution for the waste-related sins of the modern world. Raising fascinating questions of consumption, environment, and desire, Upcycling Aluminum is for anyone interested in industrial and environmental history, discard studies, engineering, product design, music history, or antiques.

The Waste Crisis

The Waste Crisis PDF Author: Hans Y. Tammemagi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195351681
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
As populations continue to increase, society produces more and more waste. Yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to build new landfills, and the existing landfills are causing significant environmental damage. Finding solutions is not simple; the problem is enormous in size, vital in terms of its impact on the environment, and complex in scope. This book provides a vast look at solid waste management in North America and seeks solutions to the waste crisis. It describes the magnitude and complexity of the problem, focusing on municipal wastes and placing them in the perspective of other wastes such as hazardous, biochemical, and radioactive debris. It describes the components of an integrated waste management program, including recycling, composting, landfills, and waste incinerators, and it presents in detail the scientific and engineering principles underlying these technologies. To illustrate both the problems and solutions of waste management programs, the authors provide seven case histories, among them the Fresh Kills (Staten Island, New York), the East Carbon Landfill (Utah), and the Lancaster County Municipal Waste Incinerator (Pennsylvania). The Waste Crisis is unique in its attempt to analyze waste management in a broader societal context and to propose solutions based on basic principles. And by doing so, it encourages readers to challenge commonly held perceptions and to seek new and better ways of dealing with waste. As such, this book deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone who deals with or feels the need to confront the growing problems of waste management.

Out of Sight

Out of Sight PDF Author: Erik Loomis
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1620970775
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Get Book Here

Book Description
A provocative analysis of labor, globalization, and environmental harm by the award-winning historian and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes. In the current state of our globalized economy, corporations have no incentive to protect their workers or the environment. Jobs moves seamlessly across national borders while the laws that protect us from rapacious behavior remain bound by them. As a result, labor exploitation and toxic pollution remain standard practice. In Out of Sight, Erik Loomis—a historian of both the labor and environmental movements—follows a narrative that runs from the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City to the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2013. He demonstrates that our modern systems of industrial production are just as dirty and abusive as they were during the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age. The only difference is that the ugly side of manufacturing is now hidden in faraway places where workers are most vulnerable. In this Choice Outstanding Academic Title, Loomis shows that the great environmental victories of twentieth-century America—the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the EPA—were actually union victories. Using this history as a call to action, Out of Sight proposes a path toward regulations that follow corporations wherever they do business, putting the power back in workers’ hands. “The story told here is tragic and important.” —Bill McKibben “Erik Loomis prescribes how activists can take back our country—for workers and those who care about the health of our planet.” —Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)