dear club,

First thing, for our NYC readership please put Thursday August 6th in your calendar for a special meeting - a talk and discussion from the brilliant Rachana Shah entitled Complex Systems for Changemakers and Optimists. Come to the Sunview (257 Nassau in Greenpoint) as early as 6:30 with talk starting at about 7pm. I met Rachana last year through waste auditing work, and truly I would follow her anywhere. If you haven't read about it here before, a waste audit entails meeting up with the team at night at some enormous midtown corporate office or another and winding through the building's maintenence arteries, mechanical rooms, and elevators to a loading dock or a stuffy concrete room with tarped floors, where we fling and rip open bags and bags and bags of disposed material from the day. These gigs are fascinating and surprising, icky and mundane, and sometimes demoralizing.. Rachana said something that particularly stuck with me on one train ride homewards (pardon my paraphrasing.!) about how to keep pushing along in continuous adverse conditions; The struggle is the whole point! You have to enjoy the struggle! The joy of the collective movement towards a better-than-now, or even just a better-than-worse keeps us going. As maddening as it may be, you yourself may never even SEE the result of the struggle; this fracture is where rage and apathy can creep in for me. Yearning to see the result of my work sillouetted on the horizon before I've even lifted a finger towards the effort. But the answer to that particular pain from all kinds of contexts is simple - enjoy the process, and make the collective effort joyous.
Big shout out to all my fellow waste auditors out there, the most smart, fun, nutty crew imaginable. What makes trash people so excellent? The work and general area of interest really seems to draw on a particular type of individual. Curious, observant, skeptical of authority, durable, a little optimistic, a little insane. When I sink into despair, when I see certain tech giants' carting companies dump the entiriety of the sorted recycling and trash into the same landfill truck, I am bolstered by the imaculate camaraderie in collective efforts like the waste audits, master composter, newtown creek alliance, trash club... You guys got me gooey today!

we see you, googoo..

one of many beautiful mechanical rooms we pass through

a few thoughts on inevitability

This word has come up a lot for me this year: inevitable. in different contexts, from different people, often in relation to the "state of things." Violent gentrification, endless wars, horrific governments, insidious technology companies, thefts of all kinds. "well it was inevitable" "it's inevitable" it's hard to hear. I don't believe it! Is that what it is to be an optimist ? I don't often identify this way... But I have a suspicion that if you look behind the word inevitable you see humans making decisions. Choices made by groups of people, not a predestined outcome. Maybe this reframing doesn't hit for you, but it does shift something for me. This doesn't make powerful people less powerful, but it does transform an event from inevitable to a sentence with an active subject and object. "This company makes weapons moved by this shipping firm paid for by this government to murder these people" Instead of "These people are dead," a power of language highlighted again and again by The New York War Crimes.

There's also an illusion that an event was predestined simply because it is in the past (hindsight bias?). Reading about technology history like the cloth weaving factory and resulting Luddite movement of artisans that opposed it (Blood in the Machine, Merchant), or the suspicion with which mechanical refridgeration was viewed for decades (Frostbite, Twilley), or the burgeoning plastic industry slowly coaching post-war americans into breaking their habits of reuse and mending with dogged advertising to dispose of new products after a single use (Waste and Want, Strasser & Plastics, a Toxic Love Story, Freinkel)... None of this technology or its mode of adoption was inevitable. The adoption and abuse of AI models and surveillance technologies is not inevitable. An even more plastic future isn't even inevitable. These things might feel predetermined because of the relentless advertising efforts made by people very driven to get a whole lot of money from us by producing harmful products in harmful ways. Certainly not all tech or habits promoted by hopeful entrepreneurs of the past have been adopted; We just remember the ones that have survived. I'd love to read a book about all the dumb ideas we've refused!! To reference another favorite book (again), Dawn of Everything, cultures are perhaps more defined by their collective refusals than their agreements. Cultures are “structures of refusal” (DoE, p. 197) often refusing to take on the habits of a neighboring group even if it could benefit them materially to do so. The power of refusal!

even more book nook

Mentioned briefly above, go check out Frostbite by Nicola Twilley- Thanks to bud Jess for recc'ing this one. This is a real ripper of a read about the history of refrigeration and the enormous network of cold storage and the global cold chain that has completely changed what we eat and how and where living things are grown and raised for consumption. A huge amount of energy goes into keeping millions of unseen miles frozen, not to mention the box in most of our homes. I learned so much from this book.

a perfect segue to Dump Meat

Alex brought us this wonderful report loooooong ago last year and I foolishly neglected to publish it. A peoples refridgerator!

The town of Shelter Island has no curbside trash collection. All residents must bring their refuse to the town recycling center themselves. Like the cafe, the post office, and the grocery store on the island, there’s a convivial “town center” feel at the recycling center where residents chit-chat while sorting out their cans and bottles. During the winter, the town recycling center also hosts the “Meat Fridge.”

The “Meat Fridge” is a standing fridge stocked with loin, roast, stew, and other cuts of venison meat from deer hunted on the island. This meat is offered for free on a first come first served basis to residents through the “Venison Donation Program” which encourages hunters to donate their hunt back to the town. This program is a favorite amongst residents. When the “Dump Meat” has arrived in the winter, word of mouth spreads quickly.

Also, I found a document for the “Venison Donation Program” on the Shelter Island Town Website. Looks like you can contact the Animal Control Officer, Beau Payne, to get “Meat Fridge” updates.

Alex

last, a ludd review

We had a couple mixed reviews on the Summer of Ludd from our TC ambassadors - some parts intriguing and hopeful, some reports of cringe and chaos. I read this report from 404 media that was a fun positive summary if you're curious. Ned Ludd lives! Lady Ludd swings her hammer! What's next girls??

ok all, much love~ and hope to see you next week! Rsvp if you can so we know how many snacks to bring. Aug 6th, 6:30-9!

xo,

trash club

this Dispatch compiled by slammer with contribution from alex