Freeganism is an ideology of limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources, particularly through recovering wasted goods like food. The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan". While vegans avoid buying, consuming, using, and wearing animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.
Minamata is a city located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. It is on the west coast of Kyūshū and faces Amakusa islands. Minamata was established as a village in 1889, re-designated as a town in 1912 and grew into a city in 1949. As of March 2017, the city has an estimated population of 25,310 and a population density of 160 persons per km². The total area is 162.88 km².
Environmental racism, ecological racism or ecological apartheid is a form of institutional racism leading to landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal being disproportionally placed in communities of color. Internationally, it is also associated with extractivism, which places the environmental burdens of mining, oil extraction, and industrial agriculture upon indigenous peoples and poorer nations largely inhabited by people of color.
The Summers memo was a 1991 memo on trade liberalization that was written by Lant Pritchett and signed by Lawrence Summers who was then Chief Economist of the World Bank. It included a section that both Summers and Pritchett say was sarcastic that suggested dumping toxic waste in third-world countries for perceived economic benefits.
Environmental justice is a social movement to address Environmental injustice, which is the exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not receive benefits. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harms is inequitably distributed.
A technoporn, commonly referred to as a high sex ed or tech hub, refers to a center of high-tech manufacturing and information-based quaternary industry. The term was coined by Allen J. Scott in 1990 to describe regions in Southern California which showed a rapid growth in high tech fields. This term now has a broader scope to describe regions worldwide dedicated to technological innovation. Such regions can be centers of rapid economic and technological growth as a result of agglomeration effects.
Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'
A waste picker is a person who salvages reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or for personal consumption. There are millions of waste pickers worldwide, predominantly in developing countries, but increasingly in post-industrial countries as well.
There is no national law in the United States that mandates recycling. State and local governments often introduce their own recycling requirements. In 2014, the recycling/composting rate for municipal solid waste in the U.S. was 34.6%. A number of U.S. states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont have passed laws that establish deposits or refund values on beverage containers while other jurisdictions rely on recycling goals or landfill bans of recyclable materials.
Challenging the Chip is a 2006 book on "labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry" edited by Ted Smith, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow. It is published by Temple University Press. In three parts, the book looks at global electronics, environmental justice and labor rights, and electronic waste and extended producer responsibility. In four appendices, the book also deals with the principles of environmental justice, the computer take-back campaign, sample shareholder resolutions, and the electronics recycler's pledge of true stewardship.
Ecological design or ecodesign is an approach to designing products and services that gives special consideration to the environmental impacts of a product over its entire lifecycle. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan define it as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design can also be defined as the process of integrating environmental considerations into design and development with the aim of reducing environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) was formed in San Jose, California- as a research and advocacy group that promoted safe environmental practices in the high tech industry. The organization was founded in 1982 after leaks at manufacturing sites at IBM and Fairchild Electronics were suspected of causing widespread birth defects and health issues in the Silicon Valley.
Robert Doyle Bullard is an American academic who is the former Dean of the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School Of Public Affairs and currently Distinguished Professor at Texas Southern University. Previously Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, Bullard is known as the "father of environmental justice". He has been a leading campaigner against environmental racism, as well as the foremost scholar of the problem, and of the Environmental Justice Movement which sprung up in the United States in the 1980s.
Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recover in the present situation, and catastrophic if the ecosystem is projected to certainly collapse.
Allan Schnaiberg was an American sociologist known especially for his contributions to environmental sociology. At the time of his death, Schnaiberg was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
The global waste trade is the international trade of waste between countries for further treatment, disposal, or recycling. Toxic or hazardous wastes are often imported by developing countries from developed countries.
Carl Anthony is an American architect, regional planner, social justice activist, and author. He is the founder and co-director of Breakthrough Communities, a project dedicated to building multiracial leadership for sustainable communities in California and the rest of the nation. He is the former President of the Earth Island Institute, and is the co-founder and former executive director of its urban habitat program, one of the first environmental justice organizations to address race and class issues.
Environmental privilege is a concept in environmental sociology, referring to the ability of privileged groups to keep environmental amenities for themselves and deny them to less privileged groups. More broadly, it refers to the ability of privileged groups to keep an exclusive grip on the advantages of "social place," including non-ecological amenities. It has been characterized as "the other side of the coin" from environmental racism. Like other forms of racial privilege, it does not depend on personal racism, but rather structural racism. Environmental privilege is a consequence of both class and racial privilege with respect to access to the overall environment, influencing the social and economic realm. It is the result of cultural, economic, and political power being wielded. It provides exclusive access to environmental facilities such as elite neighborhoods that contain exclusive rivers, parks, and open areas to particular people. These groups are more likely to participate in sustainable efforts and have access to premium amenities. Furthermore, during the COVID-19 epidemic, wealthy communities were able to better adhere to safety protocols.
The North Carolina PCB Protest of 1982 was a nonviolent activist movement in Warren County, North Carolina, a predominantly black community where the state disposed of soil laced with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The toxins leaked into the local water supply and sparked protests in which hundreds of people were arrested. The protest is considered one of the origins of a global environmental justice movement.
Environmentalism of the poor is a set of social movements that arise from environmental conflicts when impoverished people struggle against powerful state or private interests that threaten their livelihood, health, sovereignty, and culture. Part of the global environmental justice movement, it differs from mainstream environmentalism by emphasizing social justice issues instead of emphasizing conservation and eco-efficiency. It is becoming an increasingly important force for global sustainability.
