MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND WASTE · The e‐waste ‘tsunami’ • 41.8 million tonnes of global...
Transcript of MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND WASTE · The e‐waste ‘tsunami’ • 41.8 million tonnes of global...
MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND E‐WASTE
Ben Taylor
Media & Cultural Studies
School of Arts & Humanities
NTU
BBC, 2013
Hern, 2013
How do people dispose of their unwanted media technologies?
The e‐waste ‘tsunami’
• 41.8 million tonnes of global e‐waste produced in 2014
• Media technologies (small IT equipment; screens and monitors) make up 22% of this
• Only 6.5 million tonnes processed through official take‐back schemes
• E‐waste levels set to increase a further 25% by 2020
(Baldé et al., 2015)
E‐waste, the environment and climate change
• ‘81% of the energy used in a computer’s life cycle is expended in the manufacturing process’ (Parikka, 2015: 99)
• Transporting waste
• Toxicity and pollution
Upgrade culture and planned obsolescence
Digital technologies as green technologies
Digital technologies as icons of ‘cool capitalism’ (McGuigan, 2009)
• ‘to command hearts and souls,’ cool capitalism masks ‘out its much less appealing back region’ (McGuigan, 2009: 1)
• ‘The digital revolution, as it turns out, is littered with rubbish’ (Gabrys, 2011: 2)
Consumption practices/waste practices
• ‘divestment is foundational to contemporary levels of consumerism’ (Gregson, Metcalfe and Crewe, 2007: 187)
• ‘studying consumption makes no sense unless we consider the role of disposing as an integral part of the totality of what consumer activity is all about’ (Hetherington, 2004: 158)
Media studies and e‐waste
• E‐waste as ‘the elephant in media studies’ living room’ (Maxwell and Miller, 2008)
• Global volume of e‐waste equivalent to 1,000 elephants an hour (Gabrys, 2011: 14)
Consuming media technologies
• Focuses on integration and domestication of technologies, rather than divestment and disposal
Consuming media technologies
Ethnographies of waste practices
Waste
Food(Evans, 2014)
Children’s possessions (Phillips and Sego, 2011)
Household belongings(Gregson, 2007)
How do people dispose of their unwanted media technologies?
• Regularity of media technology upgrades
• Experience of planned obsolescence
• Extent to which e‐waste presents itself as a problem when making consumption choices about new media technologies
How do people dispose of their unwanted media technologies?
• ‘closet‐fill’ (Grossman, 2006: 140)
• The ‘gap in disposal’ (Evans, 2014)
• Disposal choices: • Land fill• Take‐back schemes• Recycling• Selling or passing on to others
How do people dispose of their unwanted media technologies?
• Knowledge of WEEE directive
Media technologies and e‐waste
• Policy implications
Media technologies and e‐waste
• Disciplinary implications: ‘to expand what “counts”’ in the field of media studies (Hastie, 2007: 171)
Media technologies and e‐waste
• ‘It is time to green the media by greening media studies’ (Maxwell and Miller, 2012: 21)
References
Baldé, C.P., Wang, F., Kuehr, R., Huisman, J. (2015) The global e‐waste monitor – 2014, Bonn, Germany: United Nations University, IAS – SCYCLE. Available at: http://i.unu.edu/media/unu.edu/news/52624/UNU‐1stGlobal‐E‐Waste‐Monitor‐2014‐small.pdf (accessed 19 November 2015).
BBC (2013) ‘James Howells searches for hard drive with £4m‐worth of bitcoins stored’, BBC News [online], 28 November. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk‐wales‐south‐east‐wales‐25134289 (accessed 1 December 2015).
Evans, D. (2014) Food Waste: Home Consumption, Material Culture and Everyday Life, London: Bloomsbury.
Gabrys, J. (2011) Digital Rubbish: a natural history of electronics, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gregson, N., Metcalfe, A. and Crewe, L. (2007) ‘Moving things along: the conduits and practices of divestment in consumption’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32 (2): 187‐200.
Grossman, E. (2006) High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics and Human Health, Washington DC: Island Press.
Hastie, A. (2007) ‘Introduction Detritus and the Moving Image: Ephemera, Materiality, History’, Journal of Visual Culture, 6 (2): 171‐174.
Hern, A. (2013) ‘Missing: hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site’, The Guardian [online], 27 November. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard‐drive‐bitcoin‐landfill‐site (accessed 1 December 2015).
Hetherington, K. (2004) ‘Secondhandness: consumption, disposal, and absent presence’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 22 (1): 157‐173.
Maxwell, R. and Miller, T. (2008) ‘E‐waste: elephant in the living room’, Flowtv.org. Available at: http://flowtv.org/2008/12/e‐waste‐elephant‐in‐the‐living‐room‐richard‐maxwell‐queens‐college‐cuny‐toby‐miller‐uc‐riverside/ (accessed 19 November 2015).
Parikka, J. (2015) A Geology of Media, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Phillips, B, J. and Sego, T. (2011) ‘The role of identity in disposal: lessons from mothers’ disposal of children’s possessions’, Marketing Theory, 11 (4): 435‐454.