Waste, Environment, and Society

4 units · Graduate courses (200-299)

Lecture, three hours. Each year the world creates over two billion tons of trash, generating a complex planning and policy problem that has myriad impacts on urban life. Interdisciplinary study of garbage, and its relationship to environmental problems, labor, land and planning, and public health. Exploration of the environmental and social impacts of modern industry, capitalism and consumerism, and economic growth through the study of waste production and management. Examination of the social, cultural, political, and ethical issues associated with waste production, and the diverse institutions created to manage waste. Examination of topics such as plastics, recycling e-waste, waste commodity trading, and the relationship between waste and climate change. Exploration of environmental justice issues of uneven toxic exposure from waste based on race and class, as well as the international waste commodity trade’s increasingly common practice of routing the Global North’s garbage to Global South countries. Letter grading.