Memo26-Extrapolating+and+Abstracting

Conference topic A: Conflict between "recyclers" and "compostables" There is growing recognition of the important role of social movements in driving the sustainability of industry. In this paper, I argue that the relationship between social movements and industry change is complicated by environmental groups promoting contradictory goals. This > paper examines the effect of such contradictions on the developing “bioplastics” industry in the United States. In the attempt to influence a shift toward a more sustainable good conflict occur between existing environmental movements and institutions that have been established on principles of sustainability. This analysis is to forward the debate on the social construction of technology as well as social movement scholarship from sociology. I discuss several instances of conflict that have occurred within the bioplastics field including waste processing of goods, consumption and consumers, and sources of the feedstocks for these polymers. I will show how the success of early environmental movements can create hurdles for subsequent movements and how new environmental movements can degrade the successes of prior movements.

Conference topic B: Why is it difficult to deal with 'sustainable' consumer waste?: the case of bioplastics

“Capitalist production creates capitalist culture and a passive citizenry, in which cultural consumption is used to reproduce an exploitative economic system...” --Juliet Schor (2007). //In Defense of Consumer Critique: Revisiting the Consumption Debates of the Twentieth Century// Existing corporate capitalist systems have done little to develop an intelligent discourse on collective consumption. Even as markets are one of the best sources of rapid innovation individualistic notions of consumer culture limit the range of possible pathways that this innovation can take. In the case of bioplastics, a new product type that aims to replace petroleum based goods with plant based feedstocks, companies and advocates claim that this is part of the solution to limiting our addiction to petroleum and becoming a more sustainable society. While the characteristics of bioplastics as a tangible good do in fact provide new avenues, including the potential for a cradle to cradle sustainability cycle, little has been said about the consumer's impact on this industry and the sustainability that is claimed. This is surprising considering the tension that has been created over biofuels over the last decade due to rising food prices and the negative environmental impacts of turning forests into arable land for feedstocks. The lack of imagination on this topic rests in large part on our collective unwillingness to consider individual consumption as a sociocultural problem. Despite the potential to create more appropriate technologies for individual use overconsumption positions any new innovation into an unsustainable cultural practice of overconsumption.

Conference topic C: The consumer is the party that must deal with waste and if that fails then government and if that fails transfering liability to originator with biggest pockets.

Conference topic D: Hegemonic discourses surrounding bioplastics: middle class purchasing as common sense and the limits of environmental economics sense of dematerialization through IT in industry --the logic of the purchase delimits the search space of sustainable options

Conference topic E: Hegemonic discources within bioplastic promoting communities and how are the discourses diversified and or limited? (great option

Conference topic F: Hegemonic discources of waste collectors, recyclers and composters

Conference topic G: Gramsci and the work of creating hegemonies of common sense in consumption: buying sustainable or being sustainable...

Conference topic H: How do opinions change in individuals as they gain and loose access to the discursive forums? --people who start companies are or are saying... --people who ...

Conference topic I: What are the double binds for each group implicated in bioplastic industry and technology formation?

Conferenec topic J: How to slice and dice the hegemonic discourses to find (class, race, position)?

Conference topic K: what role does the mob ownership of waste collection influence policy?

Conference topic L: Different notions of sustainability in the production of bioplastics: case studies of Italy and United States Despite the different settings between the U.S. and EU in terms of cultural practice, environmental imaginations, and social regulation the bioplastic industry in both settings claim remarkably similar benefits. I will focus on two specific companies, Novamont in Italy and Natureworks in the U.S., as lenses into how practice diverges from discourse over this developing industry. Bioplastics are claimed to be an important component to national security through the reduced need for petroleum imports, promotion of agriculture through needs for plant based feedstocks, moving to a cradle to cradle economy, and a host of other utopian claims. In the case of the Novamont facility the corporation has made it a policy to only used material sourced from local farmers, has worked with federal agencies to develop waste separation procedures and composting facilities, and refuses to use feedstocks that are not from sustainable, organic farms. The end result is that the practices of this facility are closely aligned with the narratives they have helped shape of bioplastics futures. Natureworks has argued for similar futures, however the truth is a bit less ideal. As the largest producer of the most common type of bioresin, PLA, their product requires specific conditions for compostability that does not exist in the vast majority of municipalities. This limits the capacity of this technology to become a part of a cycle of use and is more likely to end up with all other waste in landfills. Further, the starches that form the backbone of PLA at present are sourced primarily from Chinese potatoes, even as their Nebraska facility is surrounded by states that produce vast quantities of this tuber. Strange as this may seem, the cost benefit and corporate benefit simply outweight the desire for promoting local agriculture and communities...