<p>As an applied anthropology study of electronic waste (e-waste) in the remote town of Alice Springs, this dissertation chronicles how e-waste is understood and managed in the arid interior of Australia. What is electronic waste? ‘Electronic’ refers to the presence and movement of electricity throughout an object so that it may perform some expected function. Waste, however, defies simple definition. Waste usually refers to something that has been discarded due to being unwanted or unusable.<br></p><p><br></p> <p>This dissertation traces and tracks the boundaries of e-waste in Central Australia using ethnographic methods, anthropological theories of waste, and digital garbology. Digital garbology, a synthesis of digital anthropology and garbology, helps to identify and recommend strategies for confronting uneven, and often unjust, distributions of e-waste. Rather than focusing solely on discarded consumer electronics, this dissertation takes a critical look into the different types of waste emerging from the production, use, maintenance, and discard of electronics.</p><p><br></p> <p>Over the course of thirteen months of fieldwork in Alice Springs, it became clear that the label e-waste is not consistently applied to discarded electronics. E-waste is often discarded in out-of-sight locations such as landfills, recycling centers, and illegal dumping grounds. Before being discarded, however, unused electronics are often stored inside homes, sheds, and other living spaces. Rather than simply focusing on electronic objects that have already been thrown away, this dissertation explores how and why some electronics seem to resist being labeled as e-waste.</p><p><br></p> <p>Why Alice Springs? The management of e-waste in Australia has focused on the recovery of valuable metals from the recycling of televisions, computers, and mobile phones at the expense of other discarded electronics such as solar panels and household appliances. And yet, the closest e-waste recycling facility to Alice Springs is over 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) away in Adelaide, South Australia. The remoteness of Alice Springs reduces the ecological benefits of recycling. However, it also creates room to discuss the viability of alternative e-waste management strategies such as reuse and repair.</p>

My thesis aims to unobscure the ideology of wasting through embodied storytelling, philosophical inquiry, and sociopolitical history. In particular, I take the trashcan as a material representation of an "edge of externalization" --a concept I explore throughout this thesis to describe the edges beyond which waste management networks, strategies, and failures become visible. These edges offer spaces to critically engage with the inevitabilities backed into a wasting ideology that necessitates the disconnection between nature/society. Therefore, these edges offer spaces to understand and transform the alienation of our human nature. The human relationship to waste and to the trashcans in our homes is a familiar story hidden by strategic pedagogies of obfuscation. This project seeks to replace dominant behaviorist pedagogies with an alternative "compost pedagogy," which emphasizes a process of becoming through the transformation of the trashcan. Through a reflexive and creative process, the thesis explores my personal experiences with waste in the hope that my stories will not only unobscure global systems of wasting, but that my stories of unlearning, mending, and reimagining wasting will resonate with many lived experiences. / Master of Science / The purpose of this thesis is to explore the role of the trashcan as a waste management technology within our homes and use stories about alternative experiences of waste and waste management to challenge the normative narratives surrounding waste. I use the trashcan as a spectacle to understand the history of how material disposability arose in the twentieth century and as a way to understand the systems of our world most informed by the practices of waste and wasting. Using the lens of pedagogy, I aim to unobscure the dominant and oppressive education and infrastructure surrounding wasting and propose an alternative form of pedagogy I identify throughout my thesis as the compost pedagogy.

aus dem INhalt: 'Das Konzept Nachhaltigkeit hält Einzug in alle Lebensbereiche und wird zur Bedingung von Zukunftsszenarien aller Art. Am eindrücklichsten lässt sich das Thema im Design am Phänomen Müll vermitteln. Die gemeinsame Auseinandersetzung mit dem Entwerfen und Wegwerfen von Artefakten ist wegweisend für ein Nachhaltiges Design. Müll ist dabei ein gesellschaftliches und organisationales Konzept, und eine physische Erscheinung, welche ich nutze, um Nachhaltigkeit im Design zu vermitteln. Müll wird bisher im Design vornehmlich als ein technologisches Problem behandelt.

This thesis investigates three contemporary Canadian texts— Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Rita Wong’s forage—that treat information as an object that can be wasted and recuperated. Using information theory and a new sub-field of critical waste theory called “Discard Studies,” I explore how the authors studied in this thesis place these two lines of thought alongside one another to examine how the concept of recycling information challenges the material, cultural, and ideological structures that distance humans from their waste. Specifically, I read the event of recycling as an interruptive act that triggers a reassessment of the (im)material connections that tether humans to their waste, vast (inter)national networks of exchange, and environmental crises related to our garbage.