Notes Article Swipe
YOU?
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· 2023
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529232462.bm001
· OA: W4367842877
This book is about the global waste problem as defined by practitioners, how that has been framed as a problem and what the perspectives of critical social science have to offer: 1) to aid understanding of that problem; and 2) to tackle that problem. It puts critical waste research and scholarship to work in a policy-facing context to show how work in the social sciences on consumption, economies and the waste industry can illuminate understanding of the global waste problem. In such a way, the book emphasizes the causes of the global waste problem, rather than its symptoms, and shows that the current solution to the problem is a capitalist fix, one that demands more waste while simultaneously suggesting that waste is being reduced. The book flags the drawbacks with current policies that seek to promote repair, enhance markets in used goods, and increase the amount of recycled and recovered material in manufactured goods. It also shows how these same social scientific insights can be used to start conversations further upstream in policy, shifting waste from being an end-of-pipe concern to being at the heart of debates over decarbonization and digitalization.
