Coffee, Edward Hopper, 1955

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975)

The more we make, the more we waste. But this ‘we’ isn’t universal. It relies on exclusion and exploitation – dynamics glossed as ‘externalities’ by the institutions of predatory capitalism and the economists who legitimise their actions. Since 1950, industry has produced more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic. Of this, 6.4 billion tonnes have ended up as waste, the vast majority originating in rich countries. Only 9 per cent of this total has been ‘recycled’; another 12 per cent has been incinerated. The rest has gone to landfills, or been left to its own devices. The cheapest of these plastics cannot be recycled at all; abandoned, the materials break down into microplastics, leaching persistent organic pollutants along the way. The ethos of endless growth is nurtured daily by the idea of disposability, and by media reports of expanding economies (good) or stagnating ones (bad). It’s a fantasy that feeds on twin figments: the planet is infinite, and discards disappear.

Gabrielle Hecht, ‘The idea of ‘disposability’ is a new and noxious fiction

Hand-made forms by Gwilym Thomas, 1973.

Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927) by director Walter Ruttmann

The Exterminating Angel (1962), dir. Luis Buñuel

[W]hether it is a human or a nonhuman body, or whether it is a microscopic or a geological body, all bodies are inscribed within the flows and mutual transformations of material and discursive elements. One need only remember here that ecological knowledge can never be disentangled from philosophical inquiries about the nature of nature, from political decisions about energy and resource use, and thus from the regimes of power and ethical concerns accompanying social complexities.

— Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino, Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene