Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Discard2020
Most recents (5)
Do we “Gotta Keep the Devil Way Down in the Hole,” as Tom Waits sings?
Most westerners assume our system of using 1.6 gallons of drinking water to flush our shit and piss is the the best & most natural system of waste removal. Is it, though? #Discard2020 @DiscardStudies 1/10
Most westerners assume our system of using 1.6 gallons of drinking water to flush our shit and piss is the the best & most natural system of waste removal. Is it, though? #Discard2020 @DiscardStudies 1/10
1850s U.S. had a choice regarding dry or wet toilets. And that choice still governs the way we shit today and—more importantly perhaps—the way we think about our shit. Oddly enough, Christianity played a significant role in choosing wet toilets. #Discard2020 2/10
As plumbing and water came to most 19th C U.S. cities, toilets as we know them could be put inside the home. Convenient, right? But this change didn’t happen without considerable anxiety. 1st, people believed sickness was spread through miasmas. #Discard2020 3/10
Modern municipal waste disposal is not limited to removal of garbage but involves a strategic churning out of unwanted people. This is seen through a massive fire (2016) managed by displacing waste-workers @ Deonar dump 1/10 @DiscardStudies #Discard2020 go.nasa.gov/3lMdeyU
Through ethnographic work conducted over 11 months (2016-17) I found that criminalization & blame are central to the removal of waste-workers from Mumbai’s Deonar landfill by labelling them as ‘illegal’ & rendering them unwanted. 2/10 #Discard2020
Landfills globally succeed in keeping waste ‘out of sight & out of mind’ except during moments of disruption. Toxic smoke from an exhausted Deonar engulfed Mumbai, triggering demands for its closure & exhibiting a forgotten landfill 3/10 #Discard2020
bit.ly/2Ha8Xqg
bit.ly/2Ha8Xqg
In 1908 a woman threatened to call the police on her garbage collector. @PatriciaStrach and I found a Karen in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. We recognize her as a resource local gov't could use @DiscardStudies #Discard2020 Source @_newspapers 1/10 
She peered out her window, donned her bonnet, ran to the street, invoking the police if he didn’t collect all her cans. Residents used the wrong containers, in the wrong location, on the wrong day. Sanitarian C. Chapin called this “the garbage can problem.” Karen could help 2/10
Pittsburgh had joined a nationwide wave of garbage ordinances in 1894, contracting out for horses, carts, collectors, and disposal plant. But municipal garbage collection wasn’t going to work if the cans didn’t get picked up. Source: Kingsley Assoc Records @PittArchives 3/10
Imagine a near future in which the fictional University of #Leonia announces a degree program in #DiscardStudies. In doing so, they help to establish this emerging field with a full #curriculum, dedicated faculty, and eager student population. 1/10 @DiscardStudies | #Discard2020
At U of L, teaching discard studies is about more than talking #trash. This new program’s core trains students to use #SystemsThinking to critique #power as the structural force that renders material, people, and land as #waste in a globalized #ColonialCapitalist society. 2/10
Treating objects and organisms as "#disposable" has consequences, but the root of this #WickedProblem runs deep below the surface. Traditional disciplines are insufficient for studying waste bc they focus on the details and fail to recognize the full picture (Brown, 2010). 3/10
In the age of plastic, corporations are finding ways to increase profit from the Sachet Economy, at the expense of low-income communities and cash-strapped governments that suffer from the impacts of plastic pollution. @DiscardStudies #Discard2020 (1/10)
Sachets are pocket-sized packaging that contain fixed amounts of everyday products like coffee, powdered milk, condiments, and shampoo. They are perceived as affordable and indispensable choices for low-income communities in the Philippines and other parts of Asia. (2/10)
In the Philippines, Filipinos consume almost 60 billion sachets a year, enough to account for more than half of the residual plastic waste in cities. (3/10)
