Restart Podcast Ep 29: Tracing global flows of electronic ‘discards’ with Josh Lepawsky

Summary: This week we talk to Josh Lepawksy - Associate Professor in Geography at the Memorial University of Newfoundland - about his work in the field of 'Discard Studies', which examines the way in which discards (waste) move through the world at local and global scales.<br> <br> Josh's research is specifically focused on electronic waste — his new book 'Reassembling Rubbish' (MIT Press) contains the insights gained from a five-year investigation into the global trade and traffic of discarded electronics.<br> <br> He explains to us why the word 'discards' is useful in his field of study: the word 'waste' has become too familiar, conjuring up images of garbage bags and wheelie bins. These things to belong to a system that is much bigger, more expansive and more complex than what we generally imagine. Just like our sleek, sealed devices, the system is often a "black box" to us. The large-scale industrial processes by which global discards are are taken apart, destroyed, redistributed or hidden are a far-cry from our experiences of household disposal.<br> <br> Of course, aspects of this bigger picture do occasionally make it into the news, especially those that centre around the 'dumping' of e-waste in 'poorer countries'. But while there is certainly truth in shocking, photographic depictions of dumping and unsafe processing of electronic waste, they prevent us from understanding a more nuanced, global political economy of discards. There is so much more going on, even just out of the frame of these images.<br> <br> Josh unpacks some of the complex rules and conventions governing global trading of e-waste, and emphasises that recycling must be re-framed as a single part of the story, rather than the whole story.<br> <br> With a more holistic picture that incorporates the repair economy and other means of repurposing end-of-life products, we can begin discuss what a much more just and resource sufficient world would look like.