Body of Work 2 8th October 2019

Following a discussion with my tutor, I need to identify my position on dirt / rubbish / waste. I'm currently reading about dirt to try and define the difference between the words. Dirt can be a material object or a concept. Dirt is tied up with identity too. I need to narrow the subject right down because it is huge. 

I've grown up with books such as "Stig of the dump", my children love The Grinch, and one of my early memories about travelling by car is seeing a toilet dumped in the middle of the Lincolnshire Fens. Walking the last few miles of the Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenge in June 2019, I noticed lots of litter, (both compostable and not) in the countryside. I'd been careful that our group took everything with us and managed the waste, even down to finding someone who could take our pulp teacups from the tea waggon  in a car because there are no litter bins en route. At the other end of the extreme is a time recently when "lost" in a true wilderness in Scotland the path became invisible due to erosion and we had a mountain to get down. With the light fading, we came across orange peel. About 15 minutes later we found a burger box. Someone had been here recently and by following the rubbish in the style of Hansel and Gretel, we eventually found a path to follow. I felt guilty about leaving the rubbish insitu, but someone may need it to help navigate. 

Research on decomposing times

"Paper bag - 1 month

Apple core - 8 weeks

Orange skin and banana peel -  2 years 

Plastic bag - 10-20 years

Plastic bottle - 450 years

Chewing gum - 1 million years 

Cited by Keep Britain Tidy" 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/sep/24/bananas-litter-hikers-mountains-scotland last accessed 12/11/19

My personal research

I found a branch which had fallen from a tree in the local green space and stuck it in some soil in my garden. On it I hung a tissue, a piece of paper towel, an apple, satsuma and banana skin.These are all biodegradable and I'm interested to see how quickly it happens. Does the weather play a part? 

My thoughts at present 

Actual waste e.g landfill is materiality. Is there a metaphor  for dirt? e.g performance? Cleaning the land? Ex coal mining site - making the land as good as both sides of the corridor? Explore this using tree planting, litter picking. I think if I leave litter in place, I'm going to have to remove to from somewhere else. And maybe this is wellbeing creeping in.

Metaphors of waste - trash (class). Indigenous cultures are seen as backwards but live sustainably. 

Dirt and materialism (need to read around these)

Dirt - fossil formation coal - fossil fuel. Although miners were blackened by coal they still brought home coal (fuel / power) for people. It was a dangerous but well paid job. But coal mining villages and towns were shunned by society. I overheard a couple of visitors to  Sherwood Pines (Forestry Commission owned site with luxury lodges, Go Ape, bike hire etc) last week saying that the journey there was not as awful as it used to be now the mines were gone. They thought the landscape had changed for the better. I felt it would be rude to let them know my thoughts.

Thinking about the big beach bins on Roker Beach and whether it worked, I lifted the lid to find all sorts of rubbish in it. It was not being used as the council intended. How many other bins are like that - e.g the recycle bins in self clear restaurants. Does it all just go into one big bag?

Hospital practice - when you stop and think about how much single use plastic we throw away at the end of an operation and multiply it by the amount of cases we do per day in a  unit with 53 operating theatres, the amount is staggering. A colleague and I thought about this for a period of time and she is now basing her dissertation on this issue.

Different recycling practices around the country - no-one really knows what they are doing. What happens when you go on hoilday within the UK? How many times does the waste stream potentially get contaminated?

Look at Veiola - visit? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - community classes at our big recycling centre.

Reading

Ordered a paper copy of MacNaughten, P and Urry, J (1998) Contested Natures Sage Publications, London. Available from ProQuest ebook central after reading an online version. 

Hawkins, G (2006) The Ethics of Waste, Rowman and Littlefield, Maryland. (ordered - 1st copy didn't arrive - now ordered from America)

Reading Jane Bennett's thing power and discovered a research article on "Thingification".

I had a couple of ideas to start with this assignment.

This work is concerned with looking at how nature starts to take over waste, in particular items which have found themselves left in the environment for a period of time. This idea came from reading the introduction to Hawkins book and how nature takes over objects left in the environment.

I wondered if it was possible to find things in nature that looked like discarded items. I was happy with the circular bag looking like the toadstool but struggled to get much further on this particular occasion. 

I considered using a mirror to reflect landfill into areas of more managed landscape. (Freud - uncanny- projecting dirt - would need to research further ) So I bought a mirror. And then the rain came! The area became inaccessible, even with wellies  due to the huge, deep puddles. 

So back to the litter idea. One of the assignments on my last course was autobiographical. I took a look at myself and people I ride with. I'm one of the trail fairies who  pre-rides a route ensuring the  brambles and vegetation are a reasonable size and will trim if necessary.  My kit bag contains secateurs. Tom from Broken Riders, (an ethical, small British company  selling bike gear) rode with us a few years ago. Every time he saw trail litter, he picked it up and disposed of it properly or took it home. His attitude left an impression and I become frustrated with the amount of litter and bike rubbish left in places.