scholarly journals Waste management in the built environment on the basis of decentralization and integration strategies: the ‘urban metabolism’

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. van Timmeren
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Integration Strategies

scholarly journals Circularity and Enclosures: Metabolizing Waste with the Black Soldier Fly

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Waste Management ◽  
Organic Waste ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Black Soldier Fly ◽  
Modern Approach ◽  
Spatial Logic ◽  
Animal Metabolism ◽  
Urban Waste Management

This essay traces a scientific pilot project to transform the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) into a biotechnology to treat urban organic waste in accordance with the dominant cultural logics of an ecologically modern approach to waste management in contemporary China. A principle of urban waste management, circularity, and a spatial logic of urban living, enclosures, condition the scientific intervention that promises to harness animal metabolic labor as a biotechnology and a waste infrastructure that can be adapted to the urban ecologies of Guangzhou. While scientists emphasize the natural proclivities of insect metabolism to transform waste into value, my ethnographic research illustrates that the practice of aligning animal metabolism with urban metabolism is anything but natural or automatic. Together, circularity and enclosure, as guiding logics of waste management in Chinese ecological modernization, uphold a fiction of biocapital; they create the illusion that nature generates value and remediates environments without human intervention while mystifying and naturalizing the appropriation of nature and labor in the new green city. 摘要 本文研究中国科学家利用黑水虻分解餐厨垃圾生物技术的实验项目。昆 虫学家们希望，能让这一项目符合中国生态现代化垃圾处理理念，同时可以在现代化封闭式的居住社区中使用。昆虫学家强调，运用昆虫的代谢系 统来处理餐厨垃圾，既符合广州城市垃圾设施生态循环化的理念，也可利 用昆虫的天然生命周期將废物转变成资本。但人类学研究显示，昆虫的代 谢系統不可能与都巿垃圾循环規律自动匹配。在这个项目中，两个概念-循 环和封闭，仅仅是由生命资本打造生命经济的美好愿望。沒有人的介入， 只根据昆虫自然的生命周期的循环就能产生价值，这种理论混淆了生物能 与劳动力在发展新型綠色城市中的作用.

scholarly journals Flows, system boundaries and the politics of urban metabolism: Waste management in Mexico City and Santiago de Chile

Geoforum ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 353-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Guibrunet ◽  
Martin Sanzana Calvet ◽  
Vanesa Castán Broto
Keyword(s):  
Waste Management ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
System Boundaries ◽  
Santiago De Chile

scholarly journals Exploring the Phenomenon of Zero Waste and Future Cities

Urban Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathon Hannon ◽  
Atiq Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Urban Metabolism ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Zero Waste ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
Growing Body

The evolving phenomenon of zero waste encompasses the theory, practice, and learning of individuals, families, businesses, communities, and government organisations, responding to perceptions of crisis and failure around conventional waste management. The diverse and growing body of international zero waste experience, can be portrayed as both, an entirely new and alternative waste management paradigm, and or, interpreted as overlapping, extending, and synergetic with a general evolution towards more sustainable waste/resource management practices. Combining the terms zero and waste provokes creative, intellectual, and pragmatic tensions, which provide a contemporary axis for necessary debate and innovation in this sphere of resource management. This commentary draws on an interdisciplinary perspective and utilises some elements of the critique of zero waste, as a lens to examine and better understand this heterogeneous global community of practice. In particular, how the concept and implementation of a zero waste goal can increase community engagement and be a catalyst for the design and management of a more circular urban metabolism and hence, more adaptive, resilient, and sustainable future (zero waste) cities.

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