schaffer_politics

Ideally, this project will help to change waste systems in Troy. In the most optimistic projections, it will help others to establish an informal food scraps economy that can help to close resource loops in Troy, reduce waste, get more people in touch with their waste, create new institutions that make use of waste, create new, better jobs around compost, et cetera. Ideally. Of course, this isn’t my project, this is Troy Compost’s project; this is me helping out. I will try to provide reflexive critique.
 * The Obvious**

Honestly, I would like to use this as an opportunity to generate instructive knowledge about building compost systems. Who knows if the emergent neighborhood composting system will work; similar systems have worked in the past, but generally with far more capital investment. How can Troy’s sustain itself with minimal means? What can I pull from this example that can be instructive for people elsewhere who have similar projects? How can this type of knowledge be used for setting up other informal community-based distributive projects?
 * The Instructive**

This project will likely involve characterizations of multiple waste regimes that use sustainability rhetoric for purposes that I find questionable. Tote bags made of Capri Sun pouches, or the compost site in Delaware that accepts waste from hundreds of miles away. Perhaps it can open up these projects for discussion and deliboration?
 * The Critical**

Ontologies of waste are problematic. This is a big theme in discard studies, but I’m hoping to add something to it in this project, something about social movement efforts to change those ontologies? Could new critical depictions of the formation/mutation of waste ontologies help to mobilize waste reform activism?
 * The Ontological**

...using study of waste-rendered-useful as a means of destabilizing exchange?