Talking Trash: The Rhetoric of Waste Bins

There is no mythical “land of away.” We have a trash problem, and plastic is a major contributor. In 2015, we generated 34.5 million tons of municipal solid plastic waste (EPA, “National Overview”), and it is only a part of our waste. Ironically, plastic containers, from household cans to plastic liners to the large green curbside bins, held that solid waste at one time—and were soon to be their own contribution to the 3.4 million tons. The banality, opacity, and capacity of our waste bins facilitate consumer culture. Reflective design, however, can help us query our trash practices by defamiliarizing the trashcan through making its attributes and properties visible and explorable. “Talking Trash” is an act of reflective design in which I wove a waste bin from the environmental articles of various magazines. Next, I set up a Twitter account, @Talking_Trash_, to tweet about items I was placing in the bin. Then, I considered the pedagogical value of Talking Trash and similar reflective design projects in environment humanities classes. Ultimately, I argue that our trashcans engage in a rhetoric of the everyday that encourages consumer practice and waste-world-making. Talking Trash provides insight into the public and private natures of waste, the revealing and concealing our bins promote, and the affordances of materiality present in our waste bins. Talking Trash is an intervention of hope.

Promotion of sexual health among seniors in the self-help media realm of popular culture

The issue of seniors’ sexuality, especially the aspect of sexual activity undertaken by people considered “old” is usually met with silence or even condemned. The stereotypical assumptions are that with age a person’s needs associated with feeling and realizing their own sexuality dissipate, and seniors are perceived as asexual beings. Only in the last decades of the XX century did this area of “taboo” become the subject of in-depth scientific interest and research. The average life span is increasing, and as research shows, so is the number of people who are sexually active and satisfied with intercourse at an elderly age. For hundreds of years, in Western culture, sexual health was equated with reproductive ability. The contemporary concept of health emphasizes that it is a value which allows a person to realize aspirations regardless of age. This article focuses on the content of guides which bring up the importance of seniors’ sexual health. The aestheticization characteristic of the late modern period forces a deconstruction of the concept of old age. In the rhetoric of the everyday and the narcissistic style of the realm of experts, experiencing old age simultaneously becomes a source of pleasure, as well as frustration on the road to an individual’s self-realization and self-creation.