Livable Cities - London AMPS | City, University of London Page 157 In my research, I adopt an alternative take: addressing excess materials in cities and regions through collaborative practices of reuse. In so doing, I shift the focus: from an increasingly automated collection of materials that should disappear from the public eye as soon as possible, to an ongoing effort to identify and expose the potential value of discarded materials, and actualise that value with (and to the benefit of) local agents. Instead of top-down waste management, the focus of my work can thus be better framed as creating systems for commons-based waste prevention. That is the perspective I apply to my experiments with digital technologies and modes of organising. I depart from the incremental improvement often seen in smart city initiatives: instead of deploying sensors and data collection tools to improve objective control by entities of centralised power, my research experiments with the opposite: the collective generation and governance of data to rebalance power relations.8 I sustain that any solutions – technological or otherwise – in that context should be co-designed with knowledgeable stakeholders to ensure that relevance, trust, privacy and long-term dependability are incorporated by default. A chief concern is to ensure that those social groups already involved in reusing materials are not marginalised by future developments.9 Instead, I want to leverage the capacity of such groups – small businesses, community initiatives or individuals – by exploring what would be a labour point of view10 in the reuse of materials. It may be obvious nowadays, but it is always important to make it explicit: recycling is not the only solution for solid urban waste. In fact, there are many cases where recycling is unsustainable, too impactful or downright impractical.11 Recycling has acquired a positive cultural value over the last decades, embodying a growing concern for the future of the planet. But objectively, it is an industrial process whose goal is to collect materials that are not in use, and transform them back as much as possible into raw materials that will feed other industrial processes.12 There are accounts depicting the public acceptance of recycling as being engineered precisely to distract attention from the ill effects of the industrial use of plastics.13 The requirements for that system to work properly are very high. First, there must be a steady influx of recyclable materials, preferably already cleaned and sorted according to type and quality. There must be an industrial plant with the proper equipment, methodologies, workforce, sources of energy, social responsibility measures, and environmental licences. Finally, there must be an active market willing to buy recycled materials. Influx, processing, output. Even taken in broad terms, there are many weak points in that design.14 When one tries to consider other aspects, this fractal setting gains even more complexity. For instance, the logistical challenges to collecting recyclables and redistributing recycled materials are already high, even if one does not factor in the cost and environmental impact of transporting things within the city – from neighbourhoods to sorting facilities, to recycling plants, then on to retail and finally to manufacturers willing to use the recycled materials for their production. Furthermore, even that image is based on the reality of a contemporary western/northern city with ideal transportation means, a population aware of the benefits of properly sorting recyclables, and an industrial sector in need of materials. Most cities and urban areas in the world can not be portrayed that way, which complicates the situation even more. My take is obviously not to altogether replace waste management and recycling with reuse. Those practices need to handle the greater part of waste, today and in the foreseeable future. My research, however, aims at reshaping the imagination about excess to promote community-based reuse of materials alongside conventional waste management structures. DESINING POST-CONSUMPTION FLOWS It is disheartening to realise that despite a recent increase in public awareness to issues of sustainability and climate change, the imagination around product design is still very much focused only on everything that happens before a product is purchased. Granted, there have been important changes over
