Waste
Urban waste is everything the city discards —packaging, food, rubble, appliances— and managing it is the most expensive municipal service after water. The circular economy proposes closing the loop: designing so nothing becomes rubbish, repairing, reusing and returning materials to the system instead of burying or burning them.
The hierarchy is clear —reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, landfill— and most cities remain stuck on the last two steps. Waste is also geography: the landfill and the incinerator are sited where there is least power to refuse them, which makes them a matter of environmental justice.
Videos on this term (11)
- Urban geopolitics
Neil Brenner: Global Urbanization Goes Beyond City Borders
Neil Brenner argues that urbanization does not fit administrative boundaries: scale, state restructuring, extended…
Neil Brenner 3 min read - Urban ecology
Matthew Gandy: Urban Nature Reveals Power in the City
Matthew Gandy shows that water, waste, parks and expressways are nature produced by political decisions: urban…
Matthew Gandy 3 min read - Urban ecology
Where Does Your Trash Go? Waste and Environmental Injustice
Household waste ends up burned or buried next to the neighbourhoods with the least power to refuse.
3 min read - Urban ecology
City of Flows by Maria Kaika: The City and Its Invisible Flows
City of Flows (2005) by Maria Kaika shows how the modern city domesticated nature and hid its flows of water and…
Maria Kaika 3 min read - Urban ecology
Circular Urbanism: What It Is and How Cities Apply It
Circular urbanism applies the circular economy to the city: reuse materials, close loops and avoid demolition.…
3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Planetary Urbanization: Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid's Thesis
Planetary urbanization holds that the urban has no outside: mines, plantations and networks are part of the city.
Neil Brenner 2 min read - Urban psychology
Urban Public Health: Policies for Healthier and Fairer Cities
Urban public health policies decide air, water, housing and transport. What David Satterthwaite and Julian Agyeman…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban Agriculture: What It Can and Cannot Do for the City
Urban agriculture improves resilience and food justice, not self-sufficiency. What Karen Seto shows about farmland…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Sustainable Cities: Girardet, Beatley and Newman
What a sustainable city is and how it is built: Girardet's circular metabolism, Beatley's nature in urban design,…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Urban waste management and the circular economy
How cities should manage waste according to Paul Connett (zero waste), Ken Webster (circular economy) and Daniel…
2 min read - Urban ecology
Circular Economy in Cities: What It Is, Cases and Limits
The circular economy keeps materials and products in use instead of discarding them. What Walter Stahel, Ken…
3 min read
