Resisting Garbage : The Politics of Waste Management in American Cities

__Resisting Garbage__ presents a new approach to understanding practices of waste removal and recycling in American cities, one that is grounded in the close observation of case studies while being broadly applicable to many American cities today. Most current waste practices in the United States, Lily Baum Pollans argues, prioritize sanitation and efficiency while allowing limited post-consumer recycling as a way to quell consumers’ environmental anxiety. After setting out the contours of this “weak recycling waste regime,” Pollans zooms in on the very different waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. While Boston’s local politics resulted in a waste-export program with minimal recycling, Seattle created new frameworks for thinking about consumption, disposal, and the roles that local governments and ordinary people can play as partners in a project of resource stewardship. By exploring how these two approaches have played out at the national level, __Resisting Garbage__ provides new avenues for evaluating municipal action and fostering practices that will create environmentally meaningful change. "Lily Pollans's Resisting Garbage presents a new theory for understanding practices of waste removal and recycling in American cities, one that is grounded in the close observation of case studies but broadly applicable to many American cities today. The first part of the manuscript delineates the contours of current waste practices, and in particular the evolution of what Pollans calls the "weak recycling waste regime" of the United States. This "regime," which currently dominates American cities, "prioritizes hygiene, sanitation, and efficiency," is defined by unregulated consumption and production, and "allows limited post-consumer recycling of a few materials as a way to quell consumers' environmental anxiety." The second part of the study looks closely at the waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. As Pollans shows, these two cities began at around the same place in the 1980s, but followed radically different paths"-- Provided by publisher During the 1967 festival of Latin American Cinema in Viña del Mar, Chile, a group of filmmakers who wanted to use film as an instrument of social awareness and change formed the New Latin American Cinema. Nearly three decades later, the New Cinema has produced an impressive body of films, critical essays, and manifestos that uses social theory to inform filmmaking practices.This book explores the institutional and aesthetic foundations of the New Latin American Cinema. Zuzana Pick maps out six areas of inquiry—history, authorship, gender, popular cinema, ethnicity, and exile—and explores them through detailed discussions of nearly twenty films and their makers, including Camila (María Luisa Bemberg), The Guns (Ruy Guerra), and Frida (Paul Leduc). These investigations document how the New Latin American Cinema has used film as a tool to change society, to transform national expressions, to support international differences, and to assert regional autonomy. Resisting Garbage presents an empirically grounded explanation for what meaningful change in waste management could look like and why that change is so difficult.