News
June 2010
A workshop on “Recycling Textile Technologies” was held at UCL on the 14th of June 2010. Devised by Lucy Norris and Julie Botticello, researchers on project 6 in the WOTW programme, the workshop aimed to bring together people from different disciplines and sectors who work on textile recycling, with a view to exchange information and ideas about their common interest. The day covered a range of perspectives on textile recycling, including the history of the trade and its currency in Europe, anthropological analyses of the value of recycled textiles, the networks involved and their moral implications embedded in particular recycled goods, consumer research on attitudes to recycling and reuse, and a materials science project investigating the reinvention of old recycling technologies to cater for an overabundance of low-grade materials. The day proved successful in its intention of creating a strongly focussed forum for interdisciplinary dialogue, with exchanges taking place both in the lecture theatre and informally during breaks.
The papers given included:
Beverly Lemire, Textile Networks and Textile Meanings: the European Secondhand Trade in Historical Perspective, c. 1600-1850
Olumide Abimbola, Igbo Trade Networks and Secondhand Clothing
Lynne Milgram, Mobilizing Livelihood, Centering Margins: Women and the Transnational Hong-Kong Philippine Used Clothing Trade
Julie Botticello, Negotiating Status and Value: Processing Rags for Global Export
Karen Tranberg Hansen, From Family Business to International Empire: Global Networks in Secondhand Clothing Trading
Charlotte Bik Bandlien and and Kirsi Laitala, Reinventing Old Solutions to New Problems?
Nick Morley and Katie Ryder, Pulp Fiction? Re-innovating Paper Manufacture from Textiles
Pammi Sinha and Kanchana Dissanayake, Local Knowledge and Skills in Remanufacturing Fashion
Lucy Norris, Recycling moral fibre?
June 2010
A special theme issue (Thinking waste and matter: from end-of-pipe to materialising
economy) organised by Nicky Gregson & Mike Crang, on behalf of The Waste
of the World, appears in Environment and Planning A 42 (5). Details are
as follows:
Nicky Gregson & Mike Crang (2010) Materiality and waste: inorganic vitality
in a networked world, Environment and Planning A 42: 1026 - 32
Timothy Cooper (2010) Burying the 'refuse revolution': the rise of controlled
tipping in Britain, 1920 - 1960, Environment and Planning A 42: 1033 - 48
Zsuzsa Gille (2010) Actor networks, modes of production and waste regimes:
reassembling the macro social, Environment and Planning A 42: 1049 - 64
Nicky Gregson, Helen Watkins & Melania Calestani (2010) Inextinguishable
fibres: demolition and the vital materialisms of asbestos, Environment and
Planning A 42: 1065 - 83
Mike Crang (2010) The death of great ships: photography, politics and waste
in the global imaginary, Environment and Planning A 42: 1084 - 1102
April 2010
Waste of the World brought together High Storrs School in Sheffield and Veolia Environmental Services, which manages the city's municipal waste, in a project that combined art and geography to encourage children to consider 'what happens to our waste'?
Two groups were challenged to use recyclable and non-recyclable materials to produce sculptures to represent the household waste stream. They produced some fantastic fish which were exhibited in the city centre at Sunwin House on The Moor, a shopping precinct in Sheffield city centre, during Festival of Social Science week: 12th-21st March 2010. They were displayed swimming along the waste stream either to the incinerator or to be recycled. Those recyclable fish can be refashioned into a whole host of new products from newspapers, cans and bottles through fleece clothes, construction materials and street furniture to the very bins that collect waste. Those going to the incinerator are not wasted either, they will be used to generate electricity, which is exported to the national grid, and hot water which pumped around the city to heat 130 local buildings such as the Town Hall, Ponds Forge and the Winter Gardens.
September 2009
A DVD featuring curriculum materials
suitable for use with KS3 – 5 was mailed to all secondary schools in the
UK. The material draws directly from Project 1’s research and follows-on
from the Festival of Social Science event in March 2009 (see below). The
curriculum materials were produced by Helen Watkins and Juanita Shepherd
in liaison with Julie Mackenzie and Nicky Gregson. They were trialled by
teachers before mailing and provide a different take on teaching recycling.
An article based on this collaboration is in the current edition of the
Geographical Association Newsletter. If you would like to read this article,
please
follow this link. A further article written by the teachers involved
in the collaboration will appear in a future issue of Teaching Geography.
April 17th 2009
This
steel has heart: the life and death of HMS Intrepid When we think of recycling
we usually think of the glass jars, packaging and tin cans that fill household
recycling bins, or, perhaps, of images of the mountains of paper, glass
and plastics languishing in warehouses around the country following the
collapse in the price of recyclables. We probably would not think of something
like a large ex-naval vessel. But ship recycling is making a comeback in
the UK. In two or three locations around the country, old military vessels,
once the home to generations of naval personnel, are being broken up for
scrap. Tonight, at High Storrs School, Sheffield, a group of pupils will
be presenting a performance event based on their encounter with the break-up
of HMS Intrepid.
The performance will include drama, film, TV footage and story-telling. It is the result of an innovative collaboration between university researchers from the Economic and Social Research Council-funded The Waste of the World research programme, based in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield and Geography and Performance teachers at High Storrs School, Sheffield, and it has been enabled by the support of Leavesley International and Technical Demolition Services, and the HMS Intrepid Association. The event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, 2009.
The
performance is based on a visit to Canada Dock in Liverpool, where HMS Intrepid
is currently being broken up; interviews with former service men and research
materials collected by the University research team. At the dock the children
were shown the work of demolition, including various cutting techniques,
and the sorting and separation of materials for recycling. They filmed this
work in progress and were able to question the site manager and workers
at length. They then interviewed and filmed six former HMS Intrepid servicemen,
asking them questions about their lives onboard – ‘what did you like?’ ‘were
you scared?’ ‘what was the food like?’ ‘were you sea-sick?’ – as well as
about how they feel now that Intrepid is being broken up. These materials
were used to shape tonight’s performance event.
Tonight’s event will be attended by representatives from Leavesley International and TDS, and by members of the HMS Intrepid Association. Both will provide verbal responses to the performance. ‘Recycling’ HMS Intrepid is not just about ‘steel to razor blades’, or even the difficulties of this type of demolition work. It is also about sadness and loss – as one of the ex service men said, ‘It is like watching your house being knocked down’. This is a very different ‘recycling’ to putting out the kerbside collection – this steel has heart.
Nicky Gregson (Department of Geography, University of Sheffield); Helen Watkins (Department of Geography, University of Sheffeld)
Email: n.gregson@shef.ac.uk; h.j.watkins@shef.ac.uk
Contact numbers:
Nicky Gregson work – 0114 222 7943; 0191-512-0709 (H, landline); 07739 189470 (M)
Helen Watkins work – 0114 222 7980; 07906 395 991 (M)
Key factual details and related websites: This event is sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under the 2009 Festival of Social Science. Please mention this in all press reports.
Further details of the research programme available at http://www.thewasteoftheworld.org
HMS Intrepid – key dates: launched 1964; in service 1967-1999; served in the Falklands Conflict in 1982; towed to Liverpool for dismantling in September 2008
HMS Intrepid Association – http://www.hmsintrepid.com/ <
High Storrs School Sheffield – http://www.highstorrs.co.uk/
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield – http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/
June 13th 2008
Anna Krzywoszynska, one of the students on a linked PhD studentship attached to Project has recently won first prize in the Energy and Environment Poster Competition sponsored by Future Energy Yorkshire, ECUS and the University of Sheffield. A cash prize was awarded to the top 3 posters which were judged on content, presentation and impact.
Anna is conducting her research as part of the ESRC-funded Waste of the World project, investigating waste in production processes and diverse industries with her focus on the place of waste in the context of North and Central Italian organic wine production.
Well done Anna!
To view the poster click here
