Mark your calendars, the first episode of PBS’ new program Building Green airs June 5th. The show’s blog is up already and includes workshops on DIY greening, covering topics from fancy architectural design to, you know it, trash (or at least the quest to reduce it). Viewers will follow along at home as host Kevin builds a house out of straw [insert big bad wolf crack here].
Photo from this handy site.
This week in trash news:
Photo by K.Pichumani for The Hindu
When he discovered his local mangrove full of trash that had floated downstream, noble Floridian and kayak guide Kurt Zuelsdorf took action. Among his many clean-up projects is this simple and innovative trade: he offers free kayak rentals in exchange for bringing back a bag of trash. So far this project has collected 11,000 pounds of waste, to say nothing of Zuelsdorf’s larger interventions with a local nonprofit. Kudos, Kayakin’ Kurt.
Photo by Scott Keeler for the St. Petersburg Times
Out in California, the lovely ladies of Troupe de Trash are busy getting ready for their annual show, “Taking out the Trash“. With our comrads in Waitakere taking a gap year, I was thrilled to learn of this trashtastic venture in zero waste.
Speaking of trash to fashion, or just plain trashy fashion, if you noticed a gap in everydaytrash posting this week, forgive me. I was attending/recovering from a wedding in Vegas so be warned that ridiculous bridesmaid dress reuse plans may resurface soon. Proposals welcome.
This week, Trashtastic Tuesday features trash professor Joshua Goldstein whose research focuses on waste management and garbage pickers in China throughout radically different political periods. Josh was nice enough to share his insight on everything from the upcoming Beijing Olympics to the pros and cons of modern garbage collection. Fascinating stuff.
—
everydaytrash: How many “garbage pickers” currently work in the Beijing area?
Professor Joshua Goldstein: There are no definitive statistics on the number of pickers, and to some extent it also depends on how you define “pickers.” If you define pickers as folks working in landfills picking, then the number is probably just a couple thousand; if you include street pickers and folks who purchase post-consumer scrap from residents and businesses and then sell that scrap at recycling markets, the number is probably between 200,000-300,000. If you include garbage collectors and street sweepers who pick and sell on the side as well as residents (often the elderly) who regularly pick scrap from their neighborhoods for some extra cash, the number would easily exceed 350,000.
everydaytrash: How has the role of migrant garbage pickers evolved in recent Chinese history?
Goldstein: The migrant recyclers are the heart of the recycling sector in Beijing and have taken over the sector from the municipal state-owned recycling bureau. Over the last several years the state has stopped violently repressing and detaining most of these peasant migrants. Instead the Beijing government is using different indirect methods to formalize migrant recycling activities, such as more strictly regulating scrap markets, restricting the use of bicycle carts (the recycler’s main method of moving goods), and restricting the opening of collection points. The state has essentially given up on competing with the migrants and has moved to trying to regulate them effectively.
everydaytrash: How is China’s preparation for the upcoming Olympics affecting their livelihood?
Goldstein: It’s hard to say, and that’s part of what I hope to do some research into. My sense is, it hasn’t had a huge effect in any straight–forward way. the plan had been, it seemed back around 2000, that the municipal government would take over the sector, displace most of the migrant bosses and radically reduce the migrant involvement in the trade and replace them with unemployed Beijing residents or with state-allied and more easily managed companies. But these efforts to curtail, reduce, and coopt migrants in this sector seems to have failed and the state appears to have given up on this goal. Now it seems trying to regulate what exists is their main goal, and then probably in Summer 2008 there will be massive controls put on all recycling activity…as well as upon almost every other activity in Beijing.
everydaytrash: Is the informal garbage collection system in China corrupt, crime-filled and run by gangs?
Goldstein: There is certainly a lot of crime and corruption; this is a tricky question in a Socialist Market economy that in itself is oxymoronic and riddled with contradictions and “grey market” activities. Everyday gang activity and violence around the scrap yards seem to have lessened over the last several years. For example, it was common that gangs would charge fees on any truck entering a scrap yard; but the yards are far more organized, with weigh-scales and guards etc., and that sort of blatant threatening activity has dwindled. But certainly bosses all have experience with corruption, insider information, etc. I am quite ignorant about this side of things still…folks don’t talk about it at all openly.
everydaytrash: Are garbage pickers more efficient/better for the environment than government-run national recycling programs?
Certainly migrants are much more efficient, and the migrant sector is huge and laborers come from relatively poor parts of the countryside, so the social value of having migrants doing this work is quite great. Environmentally…there are so many aspects to that question. Overall, my sense is that between the migrant system and the state’s there is hardly any meaningful difference environmentally speaking. Whether the scrap is state or migrant collected, it generally gets trucked out to second tier cities where environmental regulations are not enforced and the secondary processing factories do major damage.
everydaytrash: Are there laws in place to protect the rights of migrant workers in China?
Goldstein: There are beginning to be, and there are some social services being developed as well; but these are all very recent, weak, and not very highly publicized. Migrants have far more freedom than even just a few years ago. Up to around 2000 they were still basically like illegal aliens in cities such as Beijing where household registration laws were quite strictly enforced. Now they are free to settle in the city, send their kids to schools, etc, but they still face many administrative and economic barriers.
###
Photo by Jan Egil Kirkebo.
I’ve been collecting bits and pieces on the Zabbaleen lately, Christian rag pickers in Cairo who got the short end of the governmental stick when Egypt reformed trash laws. This Christian Science Monitor piece offers some good background. More to come…
Among the many sites QE2 gazed upon during her visit to America was a collection of armor and weapons found in a trash pit from old Jamestowne.
Photo from Reuters.
Simplify your bookmarks, my friends. You can now access everydaytrash via the simple web address: everydaytrash.com
Tell all your friends!
Looks like overdressed photo ops aren’t the only things Naomi Campbell is getting out of her brief tenure as a DSNY volunteer. W magazine will be publishing the “diary” Naomi kept during the trying experience. The New York Post has excerpts of the primary source, but everdaytrash officially endorses Gawker’s version. Why spend money on the newsstand version when the best bits are already sampled and satirized online?
The hard news headlines today are priceless.
Photo from Reuters.
Welcome to Trashtastic Tuesday, the first in an ongoing series of Q & A’s with trash personalities. In preparing for a week of interviews with trash artists, two things occurred to me. First, artists are not the best at meeting deadlines. Second, why burn good material all in one week and dilute the thoughtful commentary of those in the trash world I most respect by jamming their interviews into a single jamboree of formatted questions and answers? Et voila. Behold the first trashtastic post, a conversation with Diane Kurzyna, a.k.a. Ruby Re-usable, an inspirational artist based out of Olympia, Washington and a garblogger in her own right.
—
everydaytrash: What inspired you to use trash in your art?
Kurzyna: I have used “trash” materials in my art for a long time, I grew up by the dumps of New Jersey…I specifically used trash materials when I was a freshman in high school (Kearny High, class of ’76) to make a figurine out of a frozen concentrate can, a burnt-out light bulb, plastic cutlery, and some wire that was laying around the art room. The art room was being packed up to move to a new building, and all the “good” supplies were inaccessible, so this was part necessity/part novelty. As a sophmore in college (Rutgers U, class of ’81), I collaborated on a 3 woman weaving that was “anything but wool,” using unnatural materials found in the garbage or gutter or garage as a protest against the earthtone pallette that was prevelant at the time. I tried to use more traditional materials when I was an art student at theUniversity of Washington, but was compelled to return to my roots as a trash artist, inspired by Northwest artists like Ross Palmer Beecher, Buster Simpson, and especially Marita Dingus. Using trash to make art is a challenge that I embrace: using precious materials to make art seems so easy and obvious, but to make art from trash is like making a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
everydaytrash: What’s your favorite piece of trash art by another artist?
Kurzyna: Oh my, there are so many, but I would have to say that Northwest artist Marita Dingus is my favorite trash artist, she is fearless when it comes to using stuff most people throw away! My favorite piece by her is “Buddha as a Captured Slave,” which is 60′ long. It was shown at theMuseum of Glass in Tacoma, WA:
everydaytrash: Does using unwanted and discarded material in art count as recycling?
Kurzyna: Oh, yes, using unwanted and discarded materials means I am not buying supplies new, I am not adding to the waste stream, and I am transforming them into something else. When I work with kids and show them how to make art from discards, it causes them to rethink what is junk; it also sparks creative problem solving. Trash artists are alchemists, turning base materials into gold.
everydaytrash: Is trash a political medium?
Kurzyna: It can be. I think the reasons artists make art from trash are as varied as the artists themselves. I make art from trash as an enviro-political statement, calling attention to human inguenity as well as human excess. The trash I specifically use is related to my life as an angry housewife, so the medium is also a feminst statement. I try to live by the motto: Make Art Not Waste!
###
Photos provided by the artist:
“Portrait of the Artist as a Jewish Mother” 2004 (top), “Bag Lady at the Freewall” 2006 and Renascene” installation 2007.
Check them out on her web site as well, this site is being funky with photos, which makes it tricky to share big ones with you without distorting them into long, skinny streaks!
Check back next week for another installment of Trashtastic Tuesday.
This week in trash news:
Photo credit: Tom Nycz/The Journal News
A tipster alerted me to this charming story of trash balls in the Times. This timely piece reminds me of my promise to bring you a series of posts on trash artists. Mark your calendars, the trashtistic fun begins next week!
Check it: Elizabeth McGowan reports in Waste News that the Supreme Court has upheld a community’s right to control what kind and how much trash ends up in the local landfill.
In case you haven’t noticed, everydaytrash has a bitchin’ side bar, which links to a wealth of trashy and green blogs and other informative and entertaining resources. This week, for example:
PRI’s The World aired a long piece on people who live near dumps tonight (thanks for the heads up, Mom). Stream it from their web site, or check out this complimentary audio slide show on the upcoming documentary Tijuana Dump.
Photo of a kindergarden near the dump via International Center on Child Labor and Education.
everydaytrash 