Memo32+Chapter+Summaries--sferguson

Preface

Introduction "Bioplastics are awesome..."

Section A--History and Context

Chapter 1 Bioplastics are not a new phenomenon, nor is the interest in a carbohydrate based economy. This chapter will detail how the U.S. in particular has drifted in and out of agriculturally based economies with the shifts in petroleum pricing and availability. This chapter will also consider the chemurgy movement in the 1930s, Henry Ford and his bioplastic car, WWII and drives for frugality and recycling.

Chapter 2 The focus the section I will look at the development of waste collection and recycling over the last 50 years. This chapter develops the reasons for public policy change due to awareness of waste, influence of environmental movements, and commodification of waste.

Chapter 3 The final chapter in this section will extend out from the end of the last chapters development of waste industries and present an overview of how waste and recycling have changed over the years

Section B

Chapter 4 With a background from Section A this next section focuses on bioplastics as both a product and as an industry.

Chapter 5 This chapter is about peopling and places. I want to take the field of bioplastic and start putting in the individuals that I have interviewed and develop an understanding of what exactly bioplastic is and what visions of sustainability people have.

Chapter 6 This section starts to develop the comparison between the U.S. and EU in terms of the industry makeup and public policy differences

Chapter 7 This chapter takes the comparative case away from public policy and into the behaviors of the people in their day to day lives. I want to develop a story of how the decisions that people make in an aggregate manner develop and are developed by both policy stances and characteristics of how they make decisions about purchasing and how they think about waste. In part I'd like to be able to claim that sustainability is impossible when a society does not have a culture of thinking about waste, and more importantly have this cultural practice become a trope that people don't have to think about because the systems and infrastructures, or technology for shorthand, that surround them act as cognitive shorthands for sustainable living. Discussion