Tuesday, May 26, 2020

GRAP 2030 // Week 11 // Sustainability and Zero Waste // Notes and Group Discussion

Somebody else's problem.

What is waste? What is no longer valued.

What about re-valuing? Returning to use.

Recycling is a return to older practice.

“Adaptive reuse” is increasingly important.
  • most sustainable building is existing one
  • most sustainable material already exists
  • avoiding waste is the aim of Zero Waste and Circular Economy
Provides example of Tonsley Park roofing

Bus adapted to create new home. Consumerism values what is new.

Zero Waste / Circular Economy is important for designers

Principles
  • 100% ‘diversion’ shifting costs of waste back onto producers
  • end to all forms of Obsolescence
  • durable beautiful goods for the long term
  • end to cheap, trashy, disposable goods
  • adaptive reuse, design for disassembly, re- or up-cycling
  • emphasis on intrinsic values not extrinsic ones
The capacity to endure

Zero Waste from Paul Palmer – converted chemicals from one place to another
  • most waste unnecessary and can be diverted
  • “waste” is a miscalculated resource
Zero Waste is “designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and elimininate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them. implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.”



pre- and post- caution


“If you make it, you are responsible for it” is a shift in cognition.

Imagine if the company who produced the goods was directly responsible for how the product is managed when its completed.

Somebody else's problem

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/249/garbage

Zero Waste strives for a cyclical flow of resources and energy, aiming to eliminate the now typical linear flow. We want to step in and say “hang on, we need to adjust for this”.

What role does packaging play?

Consider packaging from top to bottom. Consider the role of packaging from a producer and consumer perspective.

Plastic changes everything—Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Packaging had to become free or completely de-valued. Consider using a glass bottle for which it is your responsibility as a purchaser to keep and reuse.

Keep Cups what is your responsibility regarding their use?

Luxury is a parasite of the essential. New computer and phone goods are also considered tools—they’re use reflects back on us. Luxuries are also generally an addictive property. Coffee, tea, sugar, opium, cigarettes, media, clothing, fashion. Luxury is also relative and as standards rise, expectation rises with it. At present, we have to make more with less.

https://www.facebook.com/adelaidebikekitchen/

Select one object from these five and spend 30 minutes researching the history and development of this product and how it might be recycled. Also, consider alternates? Is this product necessary? What alternatives could be provided?

  • Apple iPhone
  • Nescafe Coffee Pods
  • cotton tshirt
  • car tire
  • batteries

———

 Somebody Else’s Problem, Robert Crocker (2011)

Value becomes defined by “consuming”. If we buy it, it is of value. That which is not bought, has no value.

“The ‘stuff’ we use and enjoy appears in our lives almost magically, often having been trasnported thousands of kilometres in trucks, trains and planes, from processing, manufacturing and distribution locations hidden from us behind barcodes, brochures, branded labels and the ‘fine print’ on packages or delivery notes (Pincen, 2002a)… the real origins, lifecycle, technical function in use, and ‘end-of-life’ destination of these same products and services, has been skilfully airbrushed out of the picture.”

“We also assume that driving (or being driven) is socially as well as technologically more ‘advanced’ and therefore more important, and more worthy of investment than ‘just’ walking, something suggested by the metaphorical meaning often applied to the word ‘pedestrian’. At present, despite the car’s many immediate practical benefits, the deeper social and environmental costs of driving or being driven are largely externalised to the larger community and natural environment, to the commons from which the oil used to power cars is extracted, to the polluted air, water, and environment created by our car dependence, and the ‘sprawl’ this dependence locks in place.”

“Cars are also deadly weapons, killing and maiming in both America and Australia each year a very large number, roughly equivalent to the casualties of our ten year involvement in Vietnam.”

driving should be a privilege and not a right.

“Why then is walking so routinely dismissed as ‘ordinary’, ‘pedestrian’, and unworthy of attention or funding as a ‘transport’ mode, even as a ‘link’ between other (public) transport modes? Why do we insist on spending so much money on the automobile, its infrastructure, and on heavily subsidising the manufacturers of this most deadly of everyday weapons?”

“We may want to replacement something that does not work very well, or has certain functional limitations with something that we think does. For many of us this functional impulse is often perceptual rather than ‘real’: we think we ‘need’ that new iPhone not because we cannot manage with our 2-year old Blackberry, but because we imagine a greater competency and functionality we might be able to enjoy with the iPhone, and we will happily invent alibis to ensure that this happens.”

“… we also buy or ‘update’ things because we fell that it is socially necessary… if we work in sales or in marketing organisation where looking good is very important, we might think we need a new suit every year or so and a new car every two or three years because otherwise the people we work with might think we are ‘falling behind’ or ‘not keeping up’.” — this idea is also called cultural capital as defined by Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

———

Group Discussion

You will be assigned one of the following:

  • coffee pods
  • single-use disposable batteries (AA / AAA)
  • modern smart phones (use Apple for your research)
  • leather / vegan leather
  • new clothing

I want you to think on, discuss, research and debate the following questions:

  • where are these items used, and by whom are the used?
  • who produces these items and where are they sold?
  • what issues do these objects pose? Consider environmental, technological and social impacts.
  • are there alternatives to these products?
  • do these products have established recycling pathways?
  • who is responsible for these recycling pathways?
Coffee Pods
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