Mapping waste research across the University of Edinburgh

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After the Single Use researchers Alice Street, Millie Marriott Webb, and Dani Farrow participated in the workshop ‘Waste & wasting: Mapping research on waste at the University of Edinburgh’, an event organised to showcase waste-related research across the university and develop new interdisciplinary collaborations.

The workshop brought together researchers working across a wide range of themes and disciplines, including recycling systems in Indonesia, the archaeological lives of waste landscapes, the affective qualities of earthquake rubble in Turkey, and the role of waste work in art history and English literature.

As part of the programme, the After the Single Use team presented their research under the title ‘After the Single Use: Rethinking Medical Devices for Reuse, Renewal, and Resilience’. The presentation explored the intersections between waste studies and plastics research, examining how and when plastics — and the chemical leakages associated with them — come to be understood as waste.

Discussions focused on how concepts of waste shape the ways pollution and toxicity are identified, located, and understood within healthcare systems, and highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for understanding the environmental and social impacts of disposable medical technologies.