Reassembling Rubbish
By jlepawsky | A magazine that inquires into what centres of modernism are discarding and reassembling ... or will be.
Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals
Stop obsessing with how personally green you live – and start collectively taking on corporate power<p>Would you advise someone to flap towels in a burning house? To bring a flyswatter to a gunfight? Yet the counsel we hear on climate change could scarcely be more out of sync with the nature of the …
ClimateWaste not, want not: Would you wear shoes made of fish?
Most of every fish taken out of the ocean is thrown away, but there's cash in finding ways to use the waste<p>A look at Jamie-Lee Cormier's brightly …
FishWe need to talk about plastic bottles
A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and despite the rise in recycling culture over the past few decades, just 7% of those collected last year were turned into new bottles. Most end up in landfill or in the ocean and by 2050 plastic waste is estimated to outweigh all …
RecyclingA Dizzying View of a Bicycle Graveyard in China
Residents of Hangzhou, China, can hop onto any one of at least 86,000 bicycles and ride wherever they like. The bikes are easy to find, too, because …
CemeteriesScott Pruitt, Trump's EPA chief met with Dow Chemical exec before rolling back a ban on pesticides
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s top environmental official met privately with the chief executive of Dow Chemical shortly before reversing his agency’s push to ban a widely used pesticide after health studies showed it can harm children’s brains, according to records obtained by The …
Scott PruittWhat Is the iPhone? 10 Years In, Its Creators and Chroniclers Explain
The iPhone, according to everyone who makes it possible.<p>The iPhone is more than just a smartphone. Or an immensely profitable product. Or a hub for your apps. Or a beautiful piece of machinery, or the cause of suffering for miners and laborers the world over. The iPhone is the sum of all those …
Rare EarthThere is a Swedish city where the CueCat lives on as a monument to media’s digital failures
— In the media world, few products have come to symbolize digital failure more than the CueCat, the feline-shaped, barcode-scanning device that flopped at the turn of the millennium, costing magazine and newspaper publishers tens of millions of dollars.<p>More than a decade later, a castaway CueCat …
InnovationMeal kits not sitting well in plastics recovery chain - Plastics Recycling Update
Meal kits delivered straight to your doorstep are marketed as providing fresh, healthful food in a convenient way. But they also contain a lot of …
Former Tech Copycat China Turns Tables on Innovation - Bloomberg
It's difficult for many Americans to shake their mental image of Chinese knockoffs peddled on street corners. And for years that described Chinese …
ChinaReport: Alberta's Tailings Ponds
Oil sands mining operations produce a toxic brew of water, sand, silt and petrochemical waste products. For over fifty years, the tar sands industry …
OilTen per cent of fish caught in oceans get thrown back, study finds
Fishing fleets dump about 10 per cent of the fish they catch back into the ocean in an “enormous waste” of low-value fish despite some progress in limiting discards in recent years, scientists said on Monday.<p>A decade-long study, the first global review since 2005 and based on work by 300 experts, …
OceansThese Women Are Paying the Price for Our Digital World - Bloomberg
Park Min-sook at home with her daughter Ju-hyun in Danyang, South Korea. Park, 44, worked at a Samsung semiconductor factory for seven years. She …
SamsungAmerican Chipmakers Had a Toxic Problem. So They Outsourced It - Bloomberg
Results in epidemiology often are equivocal, and money can cloud science (see: tobacco companies vs. cancer researchers). Clear-cut cases are rare. …
United StatesEPA chief vows to speed the nation’s Superfund cleanups; communities wonder how
BRIDGETON, Mo. – Dawn Chapman had listened with surprise and skepticism as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency vowed to clean up West …
EnvironmentThe Missing Ethics of Mining
<b>For a special EIA interview between Siegel and journal editor John Tessitore, click here.</b><p>In the middle of the 1980s the pastoralists of Essakane, …
Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link brings opportunities, challenges to N.W.T.
$82-million, 1,200-km fibre optic line to increase internet speeds in communities across the territory<p>A nearly 1,200-kilometre fibre optic line …
CanadaUnpaid and shunned, ragpickers are critical for waste management in India
They help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually.<p>The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station …
Margaret Atwood: Plastics are poisoning us. We need change, now
In a new series marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the novelist calls for a revolt against petrochemical polymers<p>Ah, the Reformation. And then, inevitably, the Counter-Reformation. We remember them, sort of, especially after reading Dissolution, CJ Sansom’s detective thriller about …
Margaret AtwoodMercury rules designed for safety end up polluting
CHELSEA, Maine -- One day this winter, John Miville reached under the hood of a battered, 1995 Ford pickup and yanked out a switch.
The Womb Is No Protection From Toxic Chemicals
Until a few decades ago, the popular but falsely reassuring belief was that babies in the womb were perfectly protected by the placenta and that children were just “little adults,” requiring no special protections from environmental threats. We now know that a host of chemicals, pollutants and …
ClimateAir pollution results in 7,700 premature deaths in Canada each year, report says
Air pollution cost Canadians $36B in 2015 due to premature death and illness<p>Air pollution cost Canadian families an estimated $36 billion in 2015 due …
PollutionJust because it says 'flushable' doesn't mean you should toss it in the toilet
'Whatever can be flushed down the toilet, someone has flushed it,' says City of St. John's manager<p>Wipes, Band-Aids, Q-Tips, dental floss, makeup …
Human-made chemicals found in higher quantities in deep ocean
CFCs, largely phased out of production in 1994, are accumulating deep in the Atlantic Ocean<p>Human-made chemicals are penetrating deeper into the North …
OceansEconomy
ISRI released a study highlighting the significant economic and environmental impact of the U.S. scrap recycling industry. The study, commissioned by …
Cold War Nuclear Waste Is Posing a Real Problem
(RICHLAND, Wash.) — The collapse of a tunnel containing radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear weapons complex underscored what critics have long …
Apple's total market value topped $800 billion on Monday
On Monday, Apple’s total market value became equivalent to nearly $800 billion USD ($1.09 trillion CAD). This means that California-based company can …
In Kenya, Phones Replace Bank Tellers
Pauline Kimari is a pharmacist in Ndaragwa, Kenya, a small town several hours’ drive north of Nairobi. She moved there from rural Muranga, several hours away, to open a small shop, Ndaragwa Joy Chemist. It is white with blue and green doors and a blue bench inside. She sells medicine and …
National Sword slashes interest in plastic scrap
<b>Worldwide</b>: <b>In early April, the China Scrap Plastics Association reported that some 5000 containers loaded with plastic scrap could well be auctioned</b> …
Where oil rigs go to die
When a drilling platform is scheduled for destruction, it must go on a thousand-mile final journey to the breaker’s yard. As one rig proved when it crashed on to the rocks of a remote Scottish island, this is always a risky business<p>It was night, stormy, and the oil rig Transocean Winner was …
Sailing