Wastocene Project – Mackenzie Hoult

As we worked more on our research project focusing on the “Wasteocene” the majority of our original findings have held true. We aimed to focus on how the neglect of waste and resource management in the development of countries can end up effecting them. As we did more research it became clear that waste management is an issue that is often set aside when countries are developing. This leads to poor environmental standards as well as poor environmental health. This also related us to the Kuznet curve which we had addressed in earlier capitaloscene labs where, less developed and low income countries tend to have a lower EPI score which, according to the Kuznet curve, may be due to industrialization. Our framing question is aiming to look at how countries deal with waste effectively in order to minimize their environmental impact in the long run, as well as examining reasons for large waste and pollution during development.

One of the larger issues we identified through our research so far is solid waste. As a country develops, their population grows and their becomes are very large need for effective solid waste management as this directly affects human health. Another interesting thing we found is that more developed countries have the resources to effectively control and plan for waste management as it can be quite expensive. While less developed, or currently developing countries struggle with this because they are still developing their economy.

In terms of Chile, one of the bigger issues they have is properly recycling and managing electronic waste. Chileans each produce 9.9 kilos of e-waste annually, according to a recent United Nations report. This is twice the global average, so Chile is beginning to launch specific initiatives to formalize the recycling of electronic products. Their main focus is products of telecommunication as these are the most prominent and are extremely harmful to the environment. As we do more research it will be interesting to look at how other countries have started to launch environmental initiatives, or lack thereof, based on how important their environmental standards are to them.

We have also created a concept map of important points so far which can be found, along with updates of progress on our Wasteocene project, on my Wasteocene summary page.

Featured Image Link: https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hoffman-program/2016/08/26/formal-e-recycling-the-complexity-of-solving-the-e-waste-problem-worldwide/

Background:

We are aiming to look at the “Wasteocene” which is mainly looking at how countries deal with waste and waste management. We found this to be a big environmental issue as well as one that directly affects human health and citizens. Our draft framing and situated context question is below. We plan to possibly alter these as we do more research.

Draft Framing Question: How does a neglect of waste/pollution and resource management intrinsically affect the development of a country?
Draft Situated Context: How can this be viewed within the context of Chile?

These questions will help us research the general issues around waste management in countries all around the world. From there we can also research specifically Chile and what kind of environmental and waste issues they face.

Procedure:

In order to find key literature for our research project we used Google Scholar, Primo, Ebso and researchgate. We searched key terms like, Chile, Municipal Solid Waste, Waste-to-energy, environmental issues in developing countries, Waste Management. These key words helped us find articles to relate to our general framing question about waste management as well as to find specific articles about our situated context in Chile. In order to organize our articles and books once we found them, we used a database called Zotero. This allowed us to add all of our research to one shared library between the three of us and organize it using tags. These tags allowed us to categorize and process different articles and find key themes that were found throughout multiple articles. Zotero also allows us to share our annotated bibliography which you can find below.

Results:

The link to our full annotated bibliography and library you can find here. From our findings it is clear that waste management is a key environmental issues especially in developing countries. Electronic waste and solid waste management were the largest issues that were cited and discussed multiple times. Looking at our specific situated context articles there are other environmental issues such as indigenous land rights, that became specific to Chile as we researched. You can find all articles in this library and click on the separate tags to look at specific resources we found.

Discussion:

As we researched it became clear that waste management is a large environmental issue today as it was cited and researched many times in multiple different countries. I think it would be helpful to research a little more on Chile specifically and look at if they are working on fixing their waste management issue or if their government is more focused on economic development. Our annotated bibliography right now gives us a really strong base for waste management in Chile as well as in developing countries and I think the tags we utilized on Zotero are a great tool for relating different research.

Featured Image picture: https://www.croda.com/en-gb/careers/our-locations/latin-america/chile

Category: Wastocene Project

Wasteocene Lab 2 – Progress + Concept Map

The Wasteocene (Lab 1)