Discarding Well? Intersectionality and Grassroots Waste Innovations in the UK.

Acheson, Cat (2024) Discarding Well? Intersectionality and Grassroots Waste Innovations in the UK. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Waste is a major global challenge. Current systems of linear resource use and disposal have resulted in ever-growing quantities of waste, which are increasingly toxic and complex. This is having severe effects on the biosphere and climate. Furthermore, the waste crisis is reflective of deep social injustices, from the exporting of toxic waste to the discarding of marginalised lands, bodies, and human needs. Existing growth-driven strategies for managing waste, including the circular economy, are failing to address the scale of these challenges. Alternative strategies are needed which confront the multiple systems of oppression underpinning the waste crisis. This thesis explores intersectionality and discard studies as promising fields for developing transformative responses to waste. Grassroots innovations are investigated as potential vectors for such transformative responses in the UK.

First, an interview-based mapping study was carried out with 19 interviewees active in GWIs or mainstream waste institutions. The mapping study establishes the extent to which GWIs are engaged with intersectionality, and explores what intersectional approaches can look like. Second, two in depth case studies were carried out, using a mix of qualitative methods to explore the dynamics of, and challenges for, intersectional GWIs in greater depth.

By combining discard studies and intersectionality to form a novel conceptual framework, this thesis finds powerful examples of how GWIs challenge predominant understandings of waste, and develop alternative strategies for “discarding well” in ways which mitigate intersecting environmental and social harms. By reusing, redistributing, and reinventing relationships with discards, GWIs mobilise resistance against oppressive societal narratives about what (and who) counts as having value – narratives which are inseparable from class, gender, race, citizenship status, heteronormativity, and other axes of power and oppression. Although GWI strategies for discarding well remain imperfect, the findings illustrate the radical potential of the grassroots for addressing the waste crisis.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Depositing User:	Kitty Laine
Date Deposited:	12 Nov 2024 10:33
Last Modified:	12 Nov 2024 10:33
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/97632
DOI:

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