Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

We spend a good amount of time in our lives managing waste: washing ourselves, taking out the trash, sorting recyclables, going to the toilet, deleting e-mail, picking out old clothes to give to charity, filling the compost bin, multitasking to save time, clipping coupons to save money. But waste is much more than what we want to get rid of or avoid. Far beyond terms like rubbish, trash, or litter, the idea of waste can provoke a minefield of emotions and moral anxieties.



Gay Hawkins explores the ethical significance of waste in everyday life--from the broadest conceptions of waste and loss to how the environmental movement has affected the ways we think about garbage, the ways we deal with it, and the ways in which we view others' reactions to waste. Do we feel virtuous for reusing a plastic bag? Do we disdain those who throw away aluminum cans? At what point does personal waste become public responsibility? How does this "public conscience" affect policy? Placing these ideas into historical, social, and cultural perspective, this thoughtful book seeks ways to change ecologically destructive practices without recourse to guilt, moralism, or despair.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. vii)
• 1 An Overflowing Bin (p. 1)
• 2 Plastic Bags (p. 21)
• 3 Shit (p. 45)
• 4 A Dumped Car (p. 71)
• 5 Empty Bottles (p. 93)
• 6 Worms (p. 119)
• Bibliography (p. 137)
• Index (p. 145)
• About the Author (p. 151)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Hawkins (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) explores the intersections of habits, bodies, ethics, and waste matter, toggling her discourse between acknowledging the material reality of various wastes and the views derived from cultural theory. Chapters introduce obvious types of waste encountered daily, e.g., plastic bags, dumped cars, and empty bottles, as well as human wastes. The book catalogs behaviors prompted by waste as distancing, disposability, and denial, while introducing legislative recycling mandates as repressive incursions of government (into one's personal life). Hawkins admits she is "... uneasy about much of the environmentalist critique" while acknowledging she has an obligation to analyze it--which she does only in a cursory and pejorative way. Regardless of her statements, this book seems to serve more as a platform for provoking controversy, introducing ideas such as the objectification of waste, and using concepts such as disposability, thing theory, and excessive materialism as social critique. Hawkins pays only cursory attention to waste (in any form) as a necessary personal, economic, and social externality, which if unmanaged, becomes an affront to aesthetic sensibilities. Of limited use in environmental collections, but presents alternative approaches to waste in today's world. Chapter endnotes. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. M. Evans emeritus, SUNY Empire State College