Creating authentic ‘glacial’ landforms from waste materials: Two UK case studies

This paper describes two case studies of hills of waste material in the UK that have been specifically conceived to replicate glacial landforms. In one case a spent oil‐shale tip ('bing') and municipal waste dump in West Lothian has been remodelled and restored in the form of a local glacial crag‐and‐tail. In the other, a municipal waste disposal landraise hill in Lancashire has been designed to resemble the local drumlins. An assessment of the geomorphological authenticity of the landforms is made and it is concluded that the involvement of glacial geomorphologists in such projects is important if convincing and authentic outcomes are to be achieved. Adherence to landscape principles and attention to detail can pay dividends in winning public support, in achieving cost savings, and in securing successful after‐uses.     

Transnational Flows of E-Waste and Spatial Patterns of Recycling in China

Two geographers residing in Beijing discuss the inflows, processing, and consumption of electronic waste—a topic largely neglected in the current literature on globalization. Based on extensive interviews with electronics producers and recyclers in China, the paper explores the global flows of e-waste and concentration of related recycling in coastal China. The authors suggest that recycling activities (authorized as well as illegal) grew in tandem with the dramatic increase in electronics production during the last decade. They note that the country's recycling sector has played a significant role in rural industrialization and local economic development, albeit in conflict with the objectives of environmental protection. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F20, L63, O17, O19. 6 figures, 23 references.     

Food waste and domestic refrigeration: a visceral and material approach

In this paper, we offer an embodied and material exploration of food waste arising from practices of food refrigeration and disposal. Inspired by geographers working with a visceral approach and calls within the discipline to evaluate the productive agency of materials, our framing brings materiality and embodiment to the fore in accounting for refrigerated food items recategorised and discarded as waste. Drawing on research conducted with 28 households in Wollongong (Australia), our analysis of refrigerating and ridding food orients around three emergent activities: placing, rotating, and assessing. Each section provides illustration of different ways in which affective social relations and subjectivities co-constitute embodied understandings and materialities of foods-becoming-waste. To conclude, we articulate the implications of a visceral and material approach for rethinking and addressing food waste.     

Cleaning up after the Celtic Tiger: scalar 'fixes' in the political ecology of Tiger economies

This paper explores intersections between political economy and nature in the so-called Tiger economies that have risen to prominence since the 1960s. Whilst Tiger states are in many ways emblematic of the extremes of late capitalism, they are nevertheless characterized by socio-natural environments that are distinctive, both in terms of the political and economic interests that have underpinned them and their rates of production. Whilst produced under a distinctive set of capitalist social relations, the dialectical reading offered herein chooses to foreground the agency that socio-nature itself possesses in relation to prevalent class interests. This agency is conceptualized in terms of a series of cultural wars over transformed nature. Using a theoretically provocative case study that examines the politics of waste management in Ireland, the paper argues that in reflecting upon the role of such culture wars in the constitution of dominant social relations in Tiger states, the concepts of scalar strategies and struggles over scale may prove useful. Whilst social contests over the scaling of governance have tended thus far to focus upon the dialectical relations between scale and political economy, the paper argues that ecological projects too are fundamentally produced by and implicated in the structuration of scale. In calling for dialogue between political ecological studies and recent work in geography that has sought to theorize scale as a social process, the paper hopes to contribute towards the development of a political ecology of Tiger states.     

旅游食物浪费研究评述及展望

旅游食物浪费是我国食物浪费问题的重灾区,其根源在于旅游活动特有的非日常和反结构特征。但目前我国旅游食物研究大多仍关注资源开发和消费促进,浪费研究则处于描述性的起步阶段。本文对国内外旅游食物浪费相关文献进行评述,分析了旅游食物浪费研究的总体特征、概念基础与内容,指出国内研究主要集中在消费端的测量和行为分析;从旅游食物体验的独特性质出发,基于消费文化与旅游体验视角对旅游食物浪费进行溯源;梳理了有助于解决旅游食物浪费问题的理论,包括消费文化视角下从资源消耗型食物消费到环境综合消费、综合价值提升以减少资源成本、基于全价值链参与提升认知和情感以减少浪费;也包括旅游体验视角下针对不同食物体验性质探索节约路径、创造多维度体验以减少资源消耗、以食物共享和慢食为代表的可持续理念的运用等;最终,文章对解决旅游食物浪费问题的未来研究提出了参考框架,从关注点、理念、对象和领域出发,提出议题和对应方法,为兼顾目的地食物价值增值和减少粮食资源消耗提供理论参照。