Polluted Water
This article discusses the shift in perception regarding polluted water. When did perceptions of polluted water change, when was it no longer considered a part of everyday life? And what caused the tide to turn?
This article discusses the shift in perception regarding polluted water. When did perceptions of polluted water change, when was it no longer considered a part of everyday life? And what caused the tide to turn?
This paper focuses on the 1987 to 1988 dumping of hazardous industrial waste in Koko, Nigeria. The paper critically analyzes the number, content, and contexts of cartoons that covered the toxic-waste dumping.
Waste is never completely or permanently “out of sight.” Once discarded, it undergoes transformations, often reappearing elsewhere in new forms. In this volume of RCC Perspectives, scholars from different disciplines—from history and art history, urban geography, environmental studies, and anthropology—investigate the traces waste leaves behind in the course of its travels.
As a space where terrestrial jurisdiction did not apply, the ocean has often served as a repository for unwanted things, whether people or objects. This article traces the journeys of several ships and their cargos of toxic waste in the 1970s and 1980s.
Urban mining—reclaiming valuable metals from discarded electronic devices—has become an important economic activity in the informal sector in places such as Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, Ghana. This article examines the material flows linking Ghana with the rest of the world, the politics of waste recycling, and the hazards faced by those processing e-waste.
Energy-from-waste plants in places like Britain were designed help reduce waste and carbon emissions, but they have had unintended side-effects.
Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, New York, was the subject of a struggle over where to dispose of the waste of a city strapped for space. While the landfill was closed in 2001, the events of 9/11 and the need to clear the large amounts of rubble and human remains from the site of the Twin Towers attack turned Fresh Kills into hallowed ground, which posed new questions about the future of the site.
Is a world without waste truly achievable? The essays in this volume of RCC Perspectives discuss zero waste as a vision, as a historical concept, and as an international practice. Going beyond the motto of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” they reflect on the feasibility of creating closed material cycles and explore real-world examples of challenges and successes on the way to zero waste.
Society’s approach to environmental protection has so far relied on certain prevailing, but perhaps specious, beliefs—that we cannot impact the environment positively, or that environmental protection is incompatible with economic growth. Braungart explores how, rather than making ineffective changes to an already broken system, it would be more beneficial to rethink that system entirely.
This essay examines practices in socialist Hungary in the 1950s that can be considered a historical antecedent to contemporary zero-waste programs. The experiences and challenges of implementing waste collection and reuse programs can offer lessons for us today.