schaffer_chapters

by Guy Schaffer
 * Our Garbage, Our Selves: Caring for compost in a throwaYAY culture**

This book is structured around a local advocacy project: planning and implementing a neighborhood-run composting system in Troy, NY. This work is situated, site-specific; it aims to construct systems that bring together neighbors, friends, activists. It measures distances in blocks, and food scraps in buckets.
 * Introduction**

But this project is also structured //within// systems and crises that are national and global; it critiques the contemporary U.S. waste regime and resource management systems; it measures garbage in barges and landfills, in millions of metric tons of carbon equivalents.

In this introduction, I set up those twin foci, explain how this book works to situate a specific social movement that is working to develop counter-hegemonic imaginaries of waste and waste governance within the contemporary U.S. waste regime. This is a single-stream narrative composed of multiple sorts of work: there is in-depth ethnography of a social movement and its actors and its small-town political context; there is discourse analysis and historical work that examines the contemporary U.S. waste system in order to characterize it as a “regime”; there is quasi-journalistic commentary on those peculiarties of waste systems that require comment; and there is personal commentary on waste affects. Unlike the single-stream system that gets split into multiple streams at the recycling plant, I think these are best left as they are, sordid and unsorted.

I also explain the chapter structure. Right now I’m thinking I can structure a dissertation around the original report composed by the Citizen’s Working Group on Composting. The report had seven recommendations for seven problems, and these recommendations have loosely structured the work of the group since then.

Centered around efforts on the part of Troy waste activists to change legislation around waste. The proposal recommended that the city council enact a pay-as-you-throw law in Troy, and amend code to reflect single-stream recycling. This is the only recommendation that did not give rise to a working group.
 * City Code: Law and Ordure**

This chapter will also examine PAYT laws in more detail, using discourse analysis to relate them to the marketization of waste problems.

The education working group is the biggest and least organized in the current Troy Compost effort. I have no doubt they will expend an enormous amount of energy to do a large amount of things. Discussion of their work will examine efforts to herd cats in organizing, but also hopefully articulate some of their imaginaries of waste problems and waste stewardship.
 * Education and Enforcement: Two parts stick for one part carrot**

This chapter will also counterpose these education efforts to the modes by which education about waste generally occurs in the contemporary U.S.? Anti-litter campagins? Hm.

It will also bring in some small consideration of compost education in schools, like TerraCycle’s Capri Sun Tote Bags, and trash cam projects.

This can examine the role of leadership in the movement. Abby Lublin. I imagined a discussion of Abby Lublin, but a whole chapter is excessive, no? Maybe. This can also look at the role of the steering committees, the hierarchies of leadership in a non-hierarchical group, and the methods by which we organized ourselves.
 * Recycling and Composting Coordinator: Who stewards the stewards?**

This focus on leadership might be counter-posed to the //lack// of leadership that exists elsewhere in waste systems, the deregulation and organized irresponsibility around waste flows.

Examines the work of techno-optimism in Troy Compost. How have innovation discourses been in play here? How has the RPI contingent influenced these discussions?
 * Facility and/or Farms: Anaerobic Indigestion**

This chapter will also examine innovation elsewhere in the U.S. waste system. Are there differences between techno-optimists in Troy and in the rest of the U.S.? Why does pyrolysis appeal to some members of Troy Compost but not others?

This is what I’ve been working on. Will probably have the most data here. Adaptive management within the Troy Compost system, working together, gathering data, personalizing and generalizing as a team. Hopefully. This will also examine discussions around composting expertise that have caused the working group to question what we’re doing all this for. Why should we have expert composters turning these piles when anybody with a pitchfork can do so? Is composting a science? Or maybe this is where I should talk about waste stewardship?
 * Neighborhood Scale Composting: Love of the heap**

Looking upward and outward, this chapter will examine the efforts of waste regimes to centralize compost, recycling, and to externalize these things. This might combine neighborhood-size maps and national waste maps…assuming I can find them…

This section can examine eco-preneurs in Troy Compost. What are the business models at work here? What do these businesspeople value?
 * Funding Opportunities: Going green for**

This can set itself against broader privatization in the U.S. waste system. How prevalent is this trend, how long has it been going on? Why is Waste Connections different from Empire Zero (local hauler)? Why is that different from ReCology or Eureka (private companies that do household compost pickup in partnership with SF and the Twin Cities)?

Oh who knows if Troy will have anything like a city-wide pickup program by then. It’s not impossible by any means. Food Cycles will likely be operational, and emptying green bins.
 * City-wide Collection: On opening the green bin and finding it empty**

I think the Winner ref might be more fitting than I initially meant it; the process of curbside pickup does a great deal of work to hide the actual work of disposal. But with green bins—especially green bins that are picked up by kids on bikes—there’s an interesting relationship between the black-boxing of the disposal process and the good feelings about having your trash taken away by kids on bikes to help them grow food. Don’t you just smile smugly when you read that? Maybe I can use this space to dig into waste affects?

This can also relate to more large-scale efforts at curbside compost pickup…what are the differences here?

Text box: on opening the black bin and finding it full: something on garbage strikes making the workings of an invisible system into something visible?

Extract salient analytic points out of these oddly categorized chapters! Adaptive management, waste stewardship, expertise and technology, waste affects, eco-preneurship, leadership and marketization. What does this teach us about waste and how people deal with it? What does it teach us about environmental social movements and how they emerge/mobilize? What can we extract from this to bring somewhere else?
 * Conclusion: Putting things in bins**

Short, sweet guide to implementing a composting system in your own hometown!
 * Appendix: Can worms eat MY garbage?**