Waste: The Basics
Waste: The Basics
English | 2025 | ISBN: 1032504242 | 164 Pages | PDF EPUB (True) | 4.4 MB
English | 2025 | ISBN: 1032504242 | 164 Pages | PDF EPUB (True) | 4.4 MB
Written in a highly accessible style, the book begins with our own everyday mundane experiences of creating waste (those objects or materials we toss in the garbage or recycling bin) and shows how these practices are connected to a global system that manages waste ineffectively. Drawing on a wealth of historical documents and empirical research, Hird unpacks the complex relationship that waste has with global structures of capitalism, neoliberalism, international trade, poverty, racialized and gendered relations, and social injustice. Armed with the basic facts about our ‘waste-maker’ global society, the author concludes that only by understanding waste as a byproduct of how society is organized around extraction, production, and consumption may we solve our increasing waste crisis through refusal, reduction, reuse, and re-orienting our lives to fit planetary sustainability boundaries.