An overview of recycling as an activity and a process, following different materials through the waste stream.
Is there a point to recycling? Is recycling even good for the environment? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Finn Arne Jorgensen answers (drumroll, please): it depends. From a technical point of view, recycling is a series of processes-collecting, sorting, processing, manufacturing. Recycling also has a cultural component; at its core, recycling is about transformation and value, turning material waste into something useful-plastic bags into patio furniture, plastic bottles into T-shirts. Jorgensen offers an accessible and engaging overview of recycling as an activity and as a process at the intersection of the material and the ideological.
Jorgensen follows a series of materials as they move back and forth between producer and consumer, continually transforming in form and value, in a never-ceasing journey toward becoming waste. He considers organic waste and cultural contamination; the history of recyclable writing surfaces from papyrus to newsprint; discarded clothing as it moves from the the Global North to the Global South; the shifting fate of glass bottles; the efficiency of aluminum recycling; the many types of plastic and the difficulties of informed consumer choice; e-waste and technological obsolescence; and industrial waste. Finally, re-asking the question posed by John Tierney in an infamous 1996 New York Times article, "is recycling garbage?" Jorgensen argues that recycling is necessary-as both symbolic action and physical activity that has a tangible effect on the real world.
- ISBN10 0262537826
- ISBN13 9780262537827
- Publish Date 12 November 2019
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher MIT Press Ltd
- Imprint MIT Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 208
- Language English
- URL http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537827