Waste and Cataclysm, Waste as Catalyst: The Politics of Disposability in New Orleans

Christopher Lang from the UCSC Environmental Studies Department

In Person Location: ISB 221

Zoom Link

Lang explores the politics of disposability in New Orleans, Louisiana, revealing how pollution intersects with Black community health, waste workers’ lives and livelihoods, and the city’s overall resilience in the face of increasing flood risk. Using a combination of methods – from semi-structured interviews to formalized employment in city government to catch basin content analyses, and more – Lang demonstrates that waste and its management in New Orleans is far from neutral, neither in impact nor procedure; rather, pollution that continually overwhelms the city stems from long-running political choices that reinscribe cultural norms and infrastructures around disposability, which underpins the local and regional economy. Lang examines these consequences of mismanaged and excessive waste at different scales within the city, noting several tensions that exist and impede structural improvements in sustainability and equity pertaining to solid waste: tensions between community and industry, “cleanliness” and job security, economy and the environment, and tradition and adaptation. In a city that simultaneously experiences gentrification, austerity, and population loss (for myriad reasons: quality of life issues, homeowner insurance costs, climate change forecasting etc.), Lang unpacks the stakes of sustainability, or lack thereof, highlighting the power dynamics laden in New Orleans’ throwaway economy as well as those in efforts to “green” a whitening city.