Week 11- continued

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed
Date: 27th November 2019
Professor: Marcela Godoy

Objectives:

1.Post your thoughts on the readings.
2.Make a step-by-step list of what you will do in the next weeks to test your hypothesis.
3.Make a list of items or machines that you will need to perform the experiments.

Reading Response:

• Cradle to Cradle – A Question of Design

I really liked this reading and it did add a lot to what I already knew about cradle to cradle. Last semester, I had taken a class called “sustainable fashion” and we learn about cradle to cradle but after reading this it did add a lot to what I already knew about this. The Wikipedia defines cradle to cradle as “Cradle-to-cradle design is a biomimetic approach to the design of products and systems that models human industry on nature’s processes viewing materials as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms.” It is a very sustainable way to use cradle to cradle because this framework seeks to create production techniques that are not just efficient but are essentially waste free. In cradle-to-cradle production, all material inputs and outputs are seen either as technical or biological nutrients. Technical nutrients can be recycled or reused with no loss of quality and biological nutrients composted or consumed. 

Then in the reading I really liked the crude part which talks about as those products are basically both producer and consumer friendly. They are long lasting, durable and affordable which makes them meet the expectations of the market. In the reading I also really liked the part where the author talked about, how the practices done in the past are very unsustainable and and just chase the economic growth and unintentionally most of the practices done are basically very depletive. Moreover, the author talks about how the old unsustainable practices are normal and not unethical because the past designers and engineers did not do something wrong, it’s just that they were using outdated practices. 

• Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic

I really found the reading very fascinating and helped me to learn about the politics of plastic. Moreover, it talked about how “fishing for plastics also seems to address the pollution of the seas, which not only affects water quality but also impairs the lives of many marine organisms. Images of dead seabirds that have starved from a stomach fullof plastic, together with tales offish and turtles who‘mistake’plastic forfood, and through ingesting this debris eventually die, are regular features ofscientific and public concern (Mooreet al.2001; Barneset al.2009).[.Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic]. This really made me feel how the depth of plastic has increased so much. 

Then, he talked about the carbon workers and how “in these processes of accumulating plastic hydrocarbons, the carbon work of humans and more-than-humans articulates distinct material-political relations to the seas. These material intra-actions within plastic oceans are part of what enables processes of materialization to even turn up as carbon work:plastic fragments turn up by accumulating over time in oceans, bodies and seas, and then become the object of clean-up campaigns or toxicity studies [.Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic]

Finally, the author concluded by saying that “many researchers have suggested–to deal with the problem of plastics contaminating oceans at the source, to strive either for a policy of minimal waste through redesign or to ensure that plastics do not travel, whether through wayward manufacturing or disposal, to seas. On the other hand, though, the current permeation of oceans and environments with plastics and their chemical residues suggests additional approaches to plastic waste as it already exists are also relevant. Largequantities of plastics continue to be generated and disposed of across estab-lished and emerging economies. Many of these economies currently lackwaste-handling infrastructures and manufacturing practices that would cap-ture plastic waste before it enters the environment. Hawkins (2010) suggests that it is useful to attend to the ways in which particular materialities may become manifest through environmental practices.”[.Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic]

 

2.Make a step-by-step list of what you will do in the next weeks to test your hypothesis.

1. Make a website 
2. add content
3. Add past information 
4. Add current experimentation 
5. Add experimentation currently done by my class peers 
6. make it available to my peers (website login)
7. will do some biomaterials experimentation myself

 

3.Make a list of items or machines that you will need to perform the experiments.

1. my own laptop to make website
2. other colleagues experimentation results with biomaterials