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This Vice article helped aid my research on the destructive nature of miro-trends, and how they are heavily influenced by popular culture within social media.
The psychological pressure encouraging an excessive rate of consumerism – all to appear on-trend – can be spotted more widely in an online culture obsessed with the creation and destruction of physical aesthetics.

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Offset in sporty sunnies, Bella Hadid in Adidas Sambas and Julia Fox in low-rise. Image: Nicoletta Belardinelli, photos by
Jacopo M. Raule / Stringer,
Arnold Jerocki and Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin via Getty Images

Pre-TikTok and pandemic, trend cycles tended to shape themselves around texture and colour. The fashion world's runways showcased the latest seasonal trends, which eventually filtered through to the high street, with a little nudge from pop culture along the way. But what happens when the trend cycle finds new roots in a new and chronically online generation?

Low rise denim for August, beige Birkenstock Bostons for September, Adidas sambas for October and sporty sunnies for November. The trend cycle is now shorter than ever. Maybe you tried your best to forget the days when marble-print polyester was everywhere and owning the green House of Sunny dress meant something, because Tom Crisp, the leader of the sustainable fashion course at the The psychological pressure encouraging an excessive rate of consumerism - all to appear on-trend - can be spotted more widely in an online culture obsessed with the creation and destruction of physical aesthetics. The pandemic saw the birth of the clean girl, with her You can describe these sartorial subcultures as ketamine chic or Making the decision to avoid microtrends is one thing, but spotting them as they gain popularity and desirability is another. LA-based sustainable stylist But if there's a trend you really, Kendall Jenner wore it once. The acceleration of aesthetics in and out of style doesn't just mean your wardrobe feels dated within a year - or less - of buying into a trend. It also translates to thousands of discarded clothes ending up in landfill. University of Falmouth, argues that there is an emotional element encompassing the acceleration of the trend cycle over the past few years. "The trends prey on our insecurities about the way we look and feel," he says, "encouraging us to consume more in order to stay on trend." gua shua-moulded face, slicked-back bun, gratitude diary and... blazer? By spring 2022, the clean girl died in anticipation of indie sleaze. While these looks might evolve from a desire for anarchic style, fast fashion outlets like Shein and H&M cheaply imitate the trendiest elements of the look, further accelerating the trend cycle, regimenting their most tell-tale items and sealing their fate to be just another microtrend. Thrifting has often been viewed as a more ethical alternative to engaging with the most destructive and consumerist excesses of fast fashion. But due to the rapid rate in which trends can be considered dated, Franny Collingham, a fashion sustainability expert and owner of sustainable clothing brand Wild Clouds, warns against engaging with microtrends altogether. "Microtrends encourage overconsumption when we should be future-proofing our wardrobes and not buying for the short term," she explains. "Whilst shopping second hand is better than buying new, we should be discouraging such behaviour and looking for durable, versatile and trans-seasonal clothing which can be with us for years." Laura Jones, a celebrity stylist, sustainability advocate and founder of sustainable fashion magazine The Frontlash, turned her attention to the harmful impacts of the industry following the 2013 Cassandra Dittmer also urges consumers to recognise that while personal style can evolve, this does not require a wardrobe refresh every month. "If you invest in one or two pieces every so often that can amplify existing pieces you already own and love, then that's the sweet spot," she says. really want to incorporate into your personal style, she advises taking the time to consider the cost-per-wear and finding the most sustainable and timeless version of the trend instead. Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh. Jones argues that engaging with fashion as an art form does not require overconsumption, or in fact any consumption at all. feral girl summer: a rejection of anything girlboss-adjacent and the toxic freedom to embrace the most insufferable version of yourself. While this coincided with the rejection of the microtrends associated with the clean girl (think smart-casual from H&M, claw clips, Molly Mae post- Love Island), the subsequent aesthetics of chaos come with their own on-trend items that will inevitably suffer the same fate. "These clothes are often designed to be worn once or twice before being thrown away," says Crisp. "So this consumption adds to fashion's huge waste clothing problem, especially for the Global South, where most of this waste ends up, destroying local environments and local fashion and textile industries." He is particularly concerned by the role that large fast fashion corporations play in the spiralling environmental damage: "These clothes are overproduced and generally made from fossil fuel-derived plastics, further adding to the environmental and climate emergency through oil extraction, chemical pollution and causing microplastics to leach into soils and seas degrading the ecosystem." Instead of immediately buying into a microtrend, Collingham suggests that you ask yourself: 'What will I wear this with? Will I wear this in five years? Is it made in a natural fabric? Is it comfy?' If the answer to any of these questions is "no", save your cash and the planet instead of chasing a superficial adrenaline rush. "If it is indeed true that fashion is not just for consumption, but for art, we should make use of fashion's potential to inspire and galvanise around the problems of excessive consumption and the tremendous burden it imposes on the planet and people," explains Jones. "'Fashion' is not one thing, one brand or one company. Therefore it can be true both that, when it is driven entirely by greed, fashion is a source of destruction, and, when values-driven, a vehicle for highlighting this injustice and demonstrating alternative ways of doing business." "If you find an item and can immediately think of at least three ways to wear it with existing items you own, then that's a good sign. If you are feeling the urge to buy additional items just to make the one new one work, that's not as good of a sign." Laura Jones's own career as a stylist revealed to her the absurdity of investing emotionally and financially in fleeting trends. "I believe that clothing can be a critical tool for exploring one's own creativity, identity, and joy," she says. "But none of these things can be accessed through the incessant pursuit of trends designed specifically to become obsolete. Style often evolves and is cultivated over time - it should not be disposable."

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How Microtrends Are Hurting the Environment

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Sure, buy those Adidas Sambas, but know that the acceleration of the trend cycle just means that more clothes are destined for landfill.

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'Micro-trends' spread through social media. 

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'Micro-trends' spread through social media. 

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Short lived fashion trends influenced by social media, that promote fashion wastage. This is because it not only causes people to throw away their now 'unfashionable' garments, but as it's generally teens/ people in their early 20s using social media and following these trends, they are unable to financially support this constant chain of buying clothes that are trending. Therefore influencing them to purchasing from cheap clothing websites such as Shein who quickly follow these mircro-trends, who produce masses of waste from their unsustainable methods of producing products.

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The waste produced by single use food packaging.
A demand fed by societies demand for food, and our laziness, in terms of pre chopped fruit and veg etc.
"O ut of the 258 million tons of municipal solid waste generated in the US, more than 63 percent was of packaging materials (for food and other purposes) and, overall, only 35 percent (89 million tons) was recycled or composted".

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Food Packaging Materials and Uses

Almost all food that we buy, especially processed food, comes packaged. Whether it comes from a grocery store or market, a sit-down or fast-food restaurant, an online meal delivery service or perhaps even the farmers' market, it is hard to find food that isn't artificially encased.

Modern food packaging is made from a variety of manufactured and synthetic materials, including ceramics, glass, metal, paper, paperboard, cardboard, wax, wood and, more and more, plastics. Most food packaging is made of paper and paperboard, rigid plastic and glass.

While some newer plastics are made from corn and other plant matter, most are made from petroleum and include additives like polymers. In addition, many types of packaging contain coatings and most packaging comes labeled with text using printer's inks; paperboards are often lined with plastic that is not visible.

Types of Food Packaging

The type of packaging used depends on several factors, such as where the food is purchased, the intended use of the packaging and the timeline for consuming the product. For example:

Grocery store food is typically sold in glass, metal, plastic or paperboard containers, and often comes encased in multiple layers. Those containers are then placed into plastic or paper grocery bags.

Takeout food is often wrapped in plastic or aluminum foil, then placed into paper, plastic or Styrofoam containers, and (often) is put into paper bags and finally into plastic grocery bags. These bags may contain plastic cutlery, napkins and straws, as well.

Processed food often has multiple layers of packaging; for example, a food item might be placed in a tray, covered in paper or plastic wrap, placed into a paperboard box and then, often, covered again in plastic wrap.

Many food items that were traditionally found in glass, metal or plastic bottles or cans are now found in multilayer plastic-coated pouches or cartons.

Current food production and consumption practices generate a lot of packaging, and new forms of packaging are constantly being developed. The packaging of food places the largest demand on the packaging industry, with approximately two thirds of all the material produced going to package food.

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The Environmental Impact of Food Packaging

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Learn more about the environmental impact of various food packaging and packaging practices found throughout our food system, from FoodPrint.

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"The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is expected to see a total 5-8 percent increase in food waste, amounting to around 1,000 to 1,500 tonnes, by the end of the month of Ramadan"
Increase in food waste during religious festivals such as Eid. An example of how culture and religion can shape food waste.

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UAE: Tadweer optimises operations to tackle increase in food waste during Ramadan

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Abu Dhabi is expected to see a total 5-8% increase in food waste, amounting to around 1,000 to 1,500 tonnes, by the end of the month of Ramadan

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"Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rage"

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"Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rage"

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A quote from the Holy Bible on food waste.
(New international Version-Proverbs 23:20-21)

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The impact culture and religion have on food waste 

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The impact culture and religion have on food waste 

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"Culture is considered one of the top factors that shaped food waste'

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"Culture is considered one of the top factors that shaped food waste'

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This articles opens up the discourse of the impact of culture, particularity religious culture on food waste.
"distinct habits and consumer patterns in relation to food, which have established themselves over generations, such
that they compose an entire tradition, which is often different from region to region" p3-4

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Despite the waste produced through our current demand for food, it does provide employment for workers in less fortunate areas of the world.

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Consumers are "brainwashed" into buying what they want when they want through years of having the products available on the shelves.
"not only a corporate change but a societal change is required"

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Two variables "Out of season produce" and "quality demand"

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Two variables "Out of season produce" and "quality demand"

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Waste is caused by rejection of food because it's quality is not up to the standard we expect, a lot of times because of asthetic reasons.

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I conducted a three part mini interview with Global Field development leader Richard Brereton to gain a professional  insight to the waste produced by societies demand for food.

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Voice recording response to the question: What impact would these changes on the farmers who supply the current demand for the produce 

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Voice recording response to the question: What impact would these changes on the farmers who supply the current demand for the produce 

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Voice recording response to the question: What are alternative methods we could implicate within the food production process that would result in less waste?

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Voice recording response to the question: What are alternative methods we could implicate within the food production process that would result in less waste?

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Voice recording response to the question: How does the 21st century western demand for food create waste?

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Voice recording response to the question: How does the 21st century western demand for food create waste?

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5. The agricultural impact on world waste

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5. The agricultural impact on world waste

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How societies demand for produce affects waste and how the culture of the farmers who supply this demand

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The companies response was that the messages where simply spelling errors...

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Shein responds to viral claim workers are hiding ‘Help Me’ messages in clothes

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A TikTok video recently received more than 40m views claiming that Shein workers were hiding concerning messages in clothing packages

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Social Media's roll in spreading the unethical conditions of sweatshop workers 

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Social Media's roll in spreading the unethical conditions of sweatshop workers 

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Images and videos have been circulasting social media of popular clothing brand 'Shein''s labelled having help signal's from the workers written on them.
This communication between the two cultures that produce/ consume these garments interested me as it's social media (which inevitably is responsible for Shein's popularity) that 'outed' the brand.

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This article talks about the water wastage, energy consumption and pollution caused by fast fashion industry as well as the ethical issues around the poor labour conditions of the workers within it.

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IntraFish.com | Latest seafood, aquaculture and fisheries news

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The EU is proposing a new directive aimed at combating greenwashing by setting minimum criteria for companies making environmental claims about their products or services, as well as for environmental labeling programs.

The Draft Green Claims Directive, proposed March 22 by the European Commission, is part of the EU's Circular Economy Package and Green Deal, a set of policy initiatives aimed at making Europe climate-neutral by 2050.

The EU proposal applies to "green claims," which refers to any message or representation that states or implies that a product or company has a positive or no impact on the environment or is less damaging to the environment than other products or company.

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European Union targeting eco-labels in greenwashing crackdown

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The EU is proposing a new directive aimed at combating greenwashing by setting minimum criteria for companies making environmental claims about their products or services, as well as for environmental labeling programs. The Draft Green Claims Directive, proposed March 22 by the European Commission, is part of the EU's Circular Economy Package and Green Deal, a set of policy initiatives aimed at making Europe climate-neutral by 2050.

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How Influencers Accelerate the Growth of Fast Fashion and Greenwashing

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Most people believe influencers are responsible for the rise of fast fashion. Here’s how they betray our trust and what you can do about it.

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'Green washing', a 21st century cultural term that defines when a brand makes unsubstantiated claims that their company is sustainable and not wasteful to entice the consumer.
To mislead (the public) or counter (public or media concerns) by falsely representing a person, company, product, etc., as being environmentally responsible;  (b) to misrepresent (a company, its operations, etc.) as environmentally responsible. (Oxford English Dictionary)
A example of how companies are profiting from the environmentalism movement.

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How youth students are channelling their creativity into waste.
An interesting look at how fashion within our culture be utilised by environmentalism.

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Students at York University turn Household waste, old textiles and crop residues, such as this wheat straw into simple sugars and converted to cellulose to spin fibres for new textiles.

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Prof Simon McQueen-Mason, of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, said the fashion sector is worth £32bn a year to the UK but most clothing and almost all textile and yarn are imported. Clothes are often only kept for a few years before being thrown away, and emission levels from the textile industry are almost as high as the total CO2 emitted through using cars.

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University of York to turn waste into fashion

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Prof Simon McQueen-Mason, of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, said the fashion sector is worth £32bn a year to the UK but most clothing and almost all textile and yarn are imported. Clothes are often only kept for a few years before being thrown away, and emission levels from the textile industry are almost as high as the total CO2 emitted through using cars.

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This article opens up a discourse on the link between narcissism and consumer desire, and the catastrophic affect this is having on the environment.
The digital influencer as the ‘product of a narcissist age’ is a quote from critiquing ‘digital technopoly’ as practised by Big Data social media corporations.The 'technopoly’ belief is that the product of human labour and thought is efficiency and that

technological calculus is superior to human judgement.

J.Open Innov. Technol. Mark. Comples 2022 1-15

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'Because we can we should.'
Farther and avid member of extinction rebellion's response to Dooley's questions interested me, as although he is aware of his position in the world, he is not letting is invalidate his cause.

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‘This is disgusting. I read about Van Gogh how much he suffered throughout his life and how he nonetheless dedicated his entire life to his art, even though he suffered. Whatever the hell they’re up against Vincent Van Gogh wasn’t responsible for many of the world’s problems today. They have no respect.’

‘It’s quite ironic how they’re complaining about hungry families when they have literally just dumped entire tins of soup on something so valuable. I wonder what the definition of progress means to them’

-comment on YouTube

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The reaction to this form of activism has caused masses of cultural debate.
The majority where applauded by Plummer's actions, deferring the public's attention from 'just stop oil's' environmental message, to Plummer being trolled on social media.

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The damage fossils fuels are doing to our environment, and how societies reaction to environmentalism gives us an insight to our cultural attitudes.

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Creating products using traditional methods and how this creates less waste 

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Creating products using traditional methods and how this creates less waste 

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During my time in the north of Vietnam I witnessed how their traditional methods of creating clothing using hemp, utilised the waste produced fully.
Although these methods are admirable, they are unable to for-fill the gross demand for products in the 21st century.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to understand different cultures attitudes to waste, and how potentially our class and income affects the value we hold to byproducts

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Averting societies attention to individual action causes us to look away from the waste caused by large capitalist companies.
I began to research how these companies are able to be so destructive while maintaining relativity healthy reputations and producing gross profit.

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My initial response to the noun 'waste' caused me to think of the household waste we produce. Recycling, being a method advertised to combat the amount of waste we produce and therefore help to lessen the climate crisis of plastic pollution.

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Examples of influences who are promoting more ethical style choices by environmental activist Keelin Moncrieff.

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OUTFIT IDEAS // sustainability, finding your own style & trend analysis

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The rising subculture of micro-celebrities 

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The rising subculture of micro-celebrities 

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How much responsibility do influences hold over their audience's purchasing decisions.
Fast fashion brands such as Pretty Little Thing are notorious for producing masses of waste, having poor labour conditions and poor quality clothing regularly use influences like Molly Mae to promote their brands. Often these influences like Molly become ambassadors for the company, a tactically scheme causes their young impressionable audiences ignore the immoral actions of the company.
This link between fast fashion and micro-celebrity influences is an interesting example of how youth culture are quick to dismiss environmental issues due to the status and lifestyle of their favourite influences.

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She's arguably the most famous Love Island contestant of all time, who's used her popularity to create an Instagram following of over six million.

But now 22-year-old Molly-Mae Hague says she's taking a new direction by accepting a senior job with fast fashion brand Pretty Little Thing (PLT).

"I'm excited to be a creative director - I'm not an influencer any more and people can see that, it's become a lot more than that," she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.

PLT and other companies in its group, like Boohoo, have received a lot of criticism in recent years for not using sustainable materials and underpaying the people making their clothes in British factories.

These issues were again raised on social media after Molly-Mae's announcement, and she was criticised for working with the brand.

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When Newsbeat interviewed Molly-Mae, we asked her about it but she chose not to respond.

After leaving the Love Island villa as a finalist in 2019, she was approached by the company to put her name to a collection, which became one of their most successful launches.

"It was Umar [Kamani, co-founder of PLT] that put this forward and said he would trust me in this role," she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.

"I'm basically going to eat, sleep, breathe Pretty Little Thing - although I do that anyway".

PLT say they've launched a new strategy, which involves making 20% of all the clothes they sell sustainable by autumn and 40% by next summer.

The company say a former high court judge, Sir Brian Leveson, has been appointed to look independently at how ethical the business is and make sure workers are being paid fairly.

'Wearing the same dress twice'

When asked if her new role would involve stopping the throwaway nature that comes with fast fashion, she said she didn't know why "it's become normal".

"I still wear all the same outfits from the very first collection I did with PLT, I always make sure in every collection it's very versatile and you're able to restyle pieces," she says.

"I'm a strong believer in wearing the same dress twice,

"I even captioned one of my Instagram pictures the other day saying 'PSA it's ok to wear the same dress twice' - it's a bad habit us girls have got into, like if you put it on Instagram it means you can't wear it again."

Molly-Mae says the job will be full-time and will involve designing collections - rather than putting her name to them - and also improving inclusivity of the brand by creating clothes in sizes 4-30.

"I understand what the consumer wants, it's a very similar audience to my following and a very similar age group.

"It's going to be putting my ideas forward pretty much every day and working towards my vision within the brand."

Her social media content involves outfit photos, make-up and hair tutorials and insights into her life with boyfriend Tommy Fury, the half-brother of boxer Tyson Fury, whom she met on Love Island.

"When people come onto my Instagram they know that what they're seeing is authentic and I've done that from the very start when I had 150k followers," she says.

Molly-Mae says she can "count on one hand" the companies she's worked with and says her followers trust her and know she would only promote something she actually likes.

She says she recently turned down an offer of £2m to work with a high street brand, simply because she didn't wear their clothes.

'It's OK to get filler dissolved'

That honesty has also led her to have difficult conversations with her followers, including earlier this year, when she announced she'd had all the cosmetic filler in her face removed and bonding on her teeth after not recognising herself any more.

'Sharing the mistakes I made so openly was the best thing I could have ever done," she says.

"Let's make a movement where it's OK to get your filler dissolved and accept that you might not want to look that way now."

She says getting cosmetic work done was due to being "a bit insecure".

"Recently I've been telling myself and my followers that you only get one face and one body so you have to accept it for what it is," she says.

"I think for me it was a journey of accepting that you don't need to get all these things done to your face, you're fine the way you are."

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

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Molly-Mae: 'I'm not just an influencer any more'

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She's arguably the most famous Love Island contestant of all time, who's used her popularity to create an Instagram following of over six million. But now 22-year-old Molly-Mae Hague says she's taking a new direction by accepting a senior job with fast fashion brand Pretty Little Thing (PLT).

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Methodology: Unless otherwise noted, information on the safety incidents is from news reports. Brands were identified primarily through import records and brand disclosure. Because some apparel brands and most textile companies refuse to reveal their supplier factories, some of the factories where we were not able to identify buyers may also be supplying international brands and retailers. We welcome you to submit suggested additions to this timeline, or corrections, to info@cleanclothes.org; please provide information sources when doing so.

Text of the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Garment and Textile Industry agreement

Signatories to the International Accord

Overview of brands that have not yet signed the Accord

Clean Clothes Campaign, International Labor Rights Forum, Labour Education Foundation, National Trade Union Federation, and Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Pakistan's Garment Workers Need a Safety Accord (September 2019).

Recommended resources:

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Deaths and injuries in the global garment industry

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After the Rana Plaza building collapse killed 1,134 workers in April 2013, more than 200 apparel brands and retailers joined together in the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. By ensuring critical renovations and repairs across 1,600 factories employing 2.5 million workers, the Accord has saved countless lives.

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Excessive use of water within the fashion industry

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4. The culture of fast fashion, and the waste it produces 

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4. The culture of fast fashion, and the waste it produces 

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A family who live remotely on a Scottish Island, utilising the earth and creating little waste. Despite their way of life being admirable, it's possible it would be unachievable without their position in society as white and middle class.

This discussion (21mins in) questions the importance of wealth, race and class in the environmentalist , movement.

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Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over - S02E03 - Full Episode

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Lack of knew coverage on climate change 

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Lack of knew coverage on climate change 

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This video sheds light on the lack of news coverage surrounding oil
An example of how our media can be influenced by the power of capitalism.

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Phoebe Plummer on BBC Newsnight | 02 November 2022 | Just Stop Oil

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Climate protesters Phoebe Plummer throw soup on Van Gogh painting.

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Climate protesters throw soup on Van Gogh painting

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In recent months, activists such as Phoebe Plummer gained masses of social media attention, for her protest against the use of fossil fuels.

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One of the eco-protesters who hurled tomato soup at Sunflowers said she would never have done it if she thought it would be damaged.

Phoebe Plummer, 21, glued herself to the wall of the National Gallery after carrying out the stunt with Anna Holland, 20, on Friday.

Photos of the priceless painting by Vincent Van Gogh covered in soup went viral, with fury from around the world directed at them.

But defending her actions, Plummer said she knew that the artwork was coveredby protective glass and that the canvas itself would not be touched.

She said people might be angry, but that the important thing is that they were now talking about it - and the reason behind it, which is her anger at continued support for fossil fuels.

Both protesters wore 'Just Stop Oil' t-shirts, and Phoebe said that over 50 million people had now viewed a video of what they did while shouting 'Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?'

Speaking to Free Seed News while holding another can of Heinz soup, she said: 'I want to make one thing perfectly clear. We did no damage to the painting whatsoever.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

'I was in court yesterday and heard that there has been "minimal damage" done to the frame, which is repairable and replaceable.

'It was behind glass and we never, ever would have considered doing it if we didn't know that we wouldn't do any damage.

'We were literally sat there glued to the wall - they wiped it off with a bit of kitchen roll'.

She appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court court on Saturday morning charged with criminal damage to the frame of the painting.

Plummer, from Lambeth, and Holland, from Newcastle, both pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutor Ola Oyedepo said the pair threw the 'orange substance' knowing there was a 'protective case' over the actual painting, though damage was caused to the frame.

She said it is unclear at this stage what the value of the damage is but said it is 'significantly below the £5,000 cost threshold'.

The pair 'did not damage the picture because the picture is worth millions', she added.

Speaking after the hearing, Plummer said she realised it was a 'ridiculous' action but said what she really wanted to get into the media was questions like why Liz Truss was planning to award over 100 new North Sea oil and gas licenses.

And she asked: 'It is okay that fossil fuels are subsidised 30 times more than renewables when offshore wind is currently nine times cheaper than fossil fuels?'

The future of humanity will be decided this decade, she said, defending 'civil resistance' as what has allowed her to live as a 'queer woman' able to vote, go to university and 'hopefully someday marry the person I love'.

Comments under the video shared on TikTok were varied, with plenty of people expressing support.

'Gotta give it to her she's got people listening,' one user said, while another added: 'The idea worked and she's not wrong'.

One said: 'Agree but she still wasted the soup could have just sharpied the glass'.

But one added: 'This girl will be forgotten - Van Gogh is immortal'.

Katie McFadden, defending, told the court: 'The prosecution needs to prove that damage has been caused.'

She said the 'extent of the damage would be relevant to the proportionality assessment' in weighing up their right to expression.

Plummer and Holland were released on bail on the condition they do not enter galleries or museums and do not have paint or adhesive substances in a public place.

Their trial was set for December 13 at City of London Magistrates' Court.
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Woman who threw soup at Van Gogh says it was wiped off with kitchen roll

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Phoebe Plummer, 21, said she knew that the artwork was covered by protective glass and that the canvas itself would not be touched.

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Culture surrounding the movement, and the impact of class within it

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2. How cultures far from our own are affected by our waste. 

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2. How cultures far from our own are affected by our waste. 

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This documentary exemplified how the waste products of our lives become the epicentre of others.
How their work recycling plastic determines if their their children are educated.

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Liberal commentators constantly call on us to take 'individual action' to avert ecological disaster. But even where this is done, the profit system still stands in the way - as the chaos of plastic recycling aptly demonstrates.
We are facing a severe climate crisis. Not only is this already causing severe damage to ecosystems, and to both animal and human life, but a chain-reaction of environmental catastrophes ultimately threatens the continued existence of our species itself.
The perpetrators of this crisis are the capitalist class. For them, short-term profit will always come before environmental sustainability. If the planet burns and floods, they know that they can use their wealth to ensure that they are the last to face any consequences.

The ruling class and their mouthpieces insist that the working class are to blame. If only we were all better at turning off the lights when we left the room! If only we all went vegan!

This insidious propaganda only serves to shift the blame away from the real criminals: the capitalists and their profit system. 70% of CO₂ emissions are produced by just 100 companies. Not only are these wealth-sucking parasites destroying the very planet we live on, but they have the gall to point the finger at us!

Capitalist chaos

The chaos that is the global waste management system is a prime example of the inability of the profit-centric capitalist system to be responsible or sustainable. After decades of encouraging UK households to recycle their waste, 46% is now sent for recycling. But the shocking reality is that most waste sent for recycling just ends up in a landfill or in an incinerator.

Half of all paper and cardboard sent to be recycled, and two-thirds of plastics, are packed into shipping containers which carry them abroad for processing - mostly to Asian countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Once there, much of the rubbish is extremely difficult to trace. More often than not, it ends up in the illegal waste trade, where workers - including children - toil in horrendous conditions picking out the most valuable recyclable materials.

The rest is incinerated, releasing toxic fumes in the process, or dumped in landfills or the sea. This is the reason that 60% of ocean plastic originates in a handful of poor Asian countries.

A load of rubbish

For UK councils, however, this has been a disaster. There is simply not enough global capacity in the recycling industry to handle the immense volume of waste being put in recycling bins. And why would a capitalist invest in developing this capacity, only to produce inferior, expensive plastic?

In the UK itself, this is compounded by our 'post-industrial' economy. In other words, there is much more money to be won by gambling on the stock-market than investing in real production!

As a result, councils are increasingly giving up on recycling. In 2017-18, Westminster council incinerated 82% of its household waste - including that which was sent to be recycled. Basingstoke Borough Council has now closed all 29 of its mixed plastic recycling 'bring banks'. And Southampton Council is trying to square the environmental circle by incinerating recycled plastic to generate energy to sell to the National Grid.

Socialist plan

As a species, we have produced a total of 8.3bn tonnes of plastic, only 9% of which has ever been recycled. And according to researchers, this statistic is likely inflated. As Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, which campaigns against the illegal waste trade, put it: "It's a complete myth when people say we are recycling our plastics."

The truth is, we can't trust the ruling class. The same crooks who feed us horsemeat and call it beef burn our plastics and call it recycling.

If we want to have any chance of resolving the climate crisis - or the million other problems faced by workers, the youth, the oppressed, and the vulnerable - we need a complete revolution in how our society is run.

In short, we need a socialist economic plan, where production is rationally, democratically, and sustainably planned on the basis of the needs of society and our planet.

The reality is that we have the technology needed to recycle plastics. There are robots capable of sorting plastic at a much higher rate and accuracy than humans. And technology has recently been developed capable of recycling all plastics, even those that previously could not be processed.

The problem, as always, is the capitalist system, which puts profit above all else. Individual solutions won't cut it. We need to consign capitalism to the dustbin of history and fight for a clear socialist alternative.

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Recycling scandal: Throw capitalism in the bin! | Socialist Appeal

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Liberal commentators constantly call on us to take 'individual action' to avert ecological disaster. But even where this is done, the profit system still stands in the way - as the chaos of plastic recycling aptly demonstrates. We are facing a severe climate crisis.

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This article details how Capitalist oil companies benefit greatly from the sales of plastic

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We all know we are supposed to recycle plastic. We are taught the three R’s in school, at home, and at the workplace: “reduce, reuse, recycle.” From an early age, we learn to separate plastics from trash using the recycling triangle and to put the blue bins out on the sidewalk once a week since doin…

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How much does recycling impact global waste?

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How much does recycling impact global waste?

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Through reading Max Liborian's discard studies, I was able to better understand the lack of impact individual choice has on the system of waste.
"MSW (household waste) making up only 3% of all waste"
This lead my research in the direction of understanding why there is such effaces in media on the waste we individually produce waste, rather than the industrial waste that takes up 97% of all waste.

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We tend to think that we are familiar with waste because we deal with it every day. Yet, this is not the case-most aspects of waste are entirely hidden from view and understanding. Discard studies is central to thinking through and countering the initiative and familiar aspects of waste. As more attention in popular, policy, activist, engineering and research areas is being focused on waste, it becomes crucial for the humanities and social sciences to contextualize the problems, materialities and systems that are not readily apparent to the invested but casual observer. Our task is to trouble the assumptions, premises and popular mythologies of waste. We redefine the problem of waste and pollution as the material externalities of complex systems so solutions can address these wider systems, rather than fall to technological or moral fixes what deal with symptoms rather than origins of problems, or, in worse case scenarios, misrecognize the problem entirely.

Discard Myths

The vast majority of popular attention to trash is focused on the waste we see in our bins: household and municipal solid waste (MSW). Yet, MSW accounts for between one and three percent of all waste. Most waste is industrial (O'Brien 2008).

Scholars are increasing looking at industrialization, capitalism, and global economies as engines of waste. Some research focuses mainly on industrial wastes and the scale, toxicity, longevity, and complexity of the stuff as a new, modern genre of materiality (eg. Sandlos and Keeling 2013). Others look at how economies necessitate waste (e.g. Horton 1997), or focus on how externalizing wastes is a conscious business plan (e.g. Robertson 2011, Faber 2008). These later studies tie municipal solid waste to industrial solid waste as an extension of the same system into domestic and civic spaces (Liboiron 2013).

A symptom of mistaking household or MSW for waste-in-general is the relationship you often see popular mythologies about individual versus industrial loci for action against pollution or waste generation. Below is an image of campaign poster with the byline: "If you don't pick it up, they will." If you don't pick up plastics, the birds will. It's an anti-litter campaign. Yet, ocean plastics do not come from litter (Sadri and Thompson 2014). Most ocean plastics escape from infrastructure, because that's what plastics are good at. They're very light, very durable. They leave aquaculture, industrial factories, landfills, bins, transfer stations, and cargo ships. Ten to twenty percent of ocean plastics are pre-production pellets, the raw stock that plastic objects are made from that escape straight from industry before they even become a consumer good (e.g. Turner and Holmes 2011).

Individual choices about waste do not in fact impact systems of waste. This is a scale argument. Sustainability and the good intentions of environmentalism are often hijacked through this scalar mismatch and the mis-recognition of waste-in-general as municipal solid waste and individual behavior (e.g. Dauvergne 2008). The systematization of this mismatch by industry is what lured me into discard studies to begin with-the thesis in Frank Ackerman's Why do we Recycle (1997) that recycling is not an environmental good, but a damage control plan by industry that allows disposability to continue by rebranding discarded items recyclable. Samantha MacBride's book Recycling Reconsidered provides firm evidence for this system (2011, also see Liboiron 2010).

Another popular myth is the inherent wastefulness of people. Yet, the inherent wastefulness of people started in 1930 following a particular business decision (Liboiron 2013, Packard 1960). People had to be taught how to waste. Susan Strasser talks about this in her classic book, Waste and Want (1999).She writes about how soldiers rioted in train stations because they would not use the new disposable cup rather than the traditional tin cup for water. She documents problems with tampons and disposable sanitary napkins.

More recently, Jesse Goldstein's work on the shift of the meaning of "waste" from something useful to something underused shows this trend in a longer history (2012). He chronicles the use of the term during enclosure in England during the 16th century, a process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land formerly held in the open field system. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be land for commons. Before enclosures, the common land was called the wasteland, and was considered productive. Yet the wasteland was unproductive for rising industries, and wastelands became those that were not been used to fullest potential.

Forgetting such histories and their origins in systems outside of individual behaviors or leads to things like Scalan's philosophical work On Garbage (2005) or Humes' more popular Garbology (2012), where the premise is that wasting and wastefulness is a part of the human condition or poor choices rather than a fairly recent phenomenon that comes from industry. These politics, where the source of trash is misaligned with individuals, is also present in measurements. While designed to account for population and its relationship to waste to compare different waste contexts, per capita waste measurement implies that people generate waste: "The average American produces 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime." One of the main tasks of discard studies is to analyze the origins and premises of these kinds of discourses, make their politics clear, and move the conversation forward in a way that takes history and systems into account.

Materials Matter

Not all waste is created equal. Samantha MacBride writes that unlike wastes before the industrial revolution, "modern wastes are synthetic, unpredictable, and above all heterogeneous" (174: 2012). They can be toxic, long lasting, and made of complex, often unknown, components. These materialities matter because they dictate how waste travels through environments and economies, whether and how it is dangerous or causes harm, and the sorts of systems and politics they are entangled in. For example, it can make sense to group disposable plastics with nuclear waste if we are thinking about longevity, because both materials exist in geological time and will outlast the human species. The ethos of most waste management is containment: interring waste in landfills or repositories. If there something lasts in geological time, then this ethos of containment is fundamentally troubled. Containment become temporary compared to the things they are containing. In "Sink: the Dirt of Systems, " Jennifer Gabrys (2009) talks about how sinks that contain waste are also spills. Making the Geologic Now (2013) highlights the increased presence of geological realities in everyday life, including types of waste.

In addition to the materiality of the waste itself, studies are emerging on the material aspects of waste infrastructure, such as the transportation systems for Superfund site clean ups (Rust and Drange 2014), global e-waste circulation patterns (Lepawsky 2014), or the shuffling of nuclear waste (Smudge Studio 2012). These researchers are zooming out to look at wider systems of waste and wasting, which have implications for the everyday minutia of trash as well as large scale, long-term, material-social arrangements that make modern waste possible.

Conclusion

Trash, waste, remainders, pollution, and discards are phases in the life of a thing. Like Arjun Apparduri's Social Lives of Things, they are categorizations that leads to certain types of circulation based on specific notions of value. Much of discard studies looks at how things move into this phase (e.g. Evans 2012), how they move out again (e.g. Crang et al 2013 ), and also looks at objects, their circulation, politics, and affiliates during this phase (e.g. Nagle 2013). These are hidden realities of day-to-day waste. While the "discard" in discard studies is a verb (to discard, to externalize materials), a noun (the waste, rubbish, or dirt itself), most importantly it also names the system that make these activities and objects possible.

Policy makers, activists, students, and the general public are very interested in trash. But it is difficult to know the intricate, nuanced, scaled aspects of waste if you come to it from everyday experience. One cannot understand waste intuitively. As Coverly et al point out in "Hidden Mountain" (2008), it is not only material waste that is invisible and hidden, but also the infrastructures, economics, social norms and other seemingly innocuous or unrelated systems. Our chief task is to redefine waste, scale it up, make these system apparent.

How a problem is defined makes some actions seem inevitable and sensible, while others are left unexamined. These are the stakes of discard studies.
Works Cited

Ackerman, Frank. Why Do We Recycle: Markets, Values, and Public Policy. Island Press, 1997.

Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Coverly, Edd de, Pierre McDonagh, Lisa O'Malley, and Maurice Patterson. "Hidden Mountain The Social Avoidance of Waste." Journal of Macromarketing 28, no. 3 (September 1, 2008): 289-303.

Crang, Mike, Alex Hughes, Nicky Gregson, Lucy Norris, and Farid Ahamed. "Rethinking Governance and Value in Commodity Chains through Global Recycling Networks." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 12-24. \

Dauvergne, Peter. The Shadows of Consumption. MIT Press, 2008.

Evans, David. "Binning, Gifting and Recovery: The Conduits of Disposal in Household Food Consumption." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30, no. 6 (2012): 1123-37.

Faber, Daniel. Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice: The Polluter-Industrial Complex in the Age of Globalization. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

Gabrys, Jennifer. "Sink: The Dirt of Systems." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27, no. 4 (2009): 666-81.

Goldstein, Jesse. "Terra Economica: Waste and the Production of Enclosed Nature." Antipode 45, no. 2 (March 1, 2013): 357-75.

Horton, Stephen. "Value, Waste and the Built Environment: A Marxian Analysis." Capitalism Nature Socialism 8, no. 2 (1997): 127-39.

Humes, Edward. Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash. Penguin, 2012.

Lepawsky, Josh. "The Changing Geography of Global Trade in Electronic Discards: Time to Rethink the E-Waste Problem: The Changing Geography of Global Trade in Electronic Discards." The Geographical Journal, April 2014.

Liboiron, Max. "Modern Waste as Strategy." Lo Squaderno: Explorations in Space and Society 29 (2013): 9-12.

---. "Recycling as a Crisis of Meaning." E-Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Intersections Conference Journal, 2010, 1-9.

LIFE. "Throwaway Living." LIFE Magazine, August 1, 1955.

MacBride, Samantha. Recycling Reconsidered: The Present Failure and Future Promise of Environmental Action in the United States. MIT Press, 2011.

Nagle, Robin. Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City. Macmillan, 2013.

O'Brien, Martin. A Crisis of Waste?: Understanding the Rubbish Society. Routledge, 2012.

Packard, Vance. The Waste Makers. Vance Packard Inc., 1960.

Robertson, Morgan. "Measurement and Alienation: Making a World of Ecosystem Services." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37, no. 3 (July 1, 2012): 386-401.

Royte, Elizabeth. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. Hachette Digital, Inc., 2007.

Rust, Susanne, and Matt Drange. "Toxic Trail: How a Landmark Cleanup Program Leaves Its Own Toxic Legacy." The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2014/mar/-sp-toxic-waste-silicon-valley-trail.

Sadri, Saeed S., and Richard C. Thompson. "On the Quantity and Composition of Floating Plastic Debris Entering and Leaving the Tamar Estuary, Southwest England." Marine Pollution Bulletin 81, no. 1 (April 15, 2014): 55-60.

Sandlos, John, and Arn Keeling. "Zombie Mines and the (Over)burden of History." The Solutions Journal 4, no. 3 (June 2013).

Scanlan, John. On Garbage. Reaktion Books, 2005.

Smudge Studio. Repository: A Typological Guide to America's Ephemeral Nuclear Infrastructure. Card deck, June 28, 2012.

Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. Macmillan, 1999.

Turner, Andrew, and Luke Holmes. "Occurrence, Distribution and Characteristics of Beached Plastic Production Pellets on the Island of Malta (central Mediterranean)." Marine Pollution Bulletin 62, no. 2 (February 2011): 377-81.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Draft Final Report: Screening Survey of Industrial Subtitle D Establishments. Rockville, MD: Westat, 1987.

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This entry was posted in Consumption, history, Methods, Recycling, Waste and tagged critical scholarship, Discard, discard studies, Municipal solid waste, waste studies. Bookmark the permalink.

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People tend to think that we are familiar with waste because we deal with it every day. Yet, this is not the case. Discard studies is central to thinking through and countering the initiative aspects of waste. As more popular, policy, activist, engineering and research attention is drawn to waste it becomes crucial for the...