"The management of the population has become synonymous with the management of waste, excess, and trash, and only those who have the ability to accelerate will be sustained and supported by the larger logistical and infrastructural systems of a new post-pandemic cybernetic economy, which in reality is just a more extreme and refined form of the capitalism we had all already been accustomed to living within."

This equipment was then delivered to places where consumers are expected to take their waste – most often government-approved takeback stations. They found that 19 (6%) of the tracked scrap equipment was exported, including 11 very likely illegal shipments to the countries of Ghana, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, Thailand, and Ukraine, outside of the EU.

Tens of thousands of people live in Zabbaleen, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, they all make a living out of recycling the entire capital city’s refuse. Their whole town is practically a giant dump and it provides them with almost everything they need: from kids’ toys to fodder for livestock.  Even their pigs play an important part in recycling food waste. Most important of all though, the dump provides livelihoods for the people of Zabbaleen.
Every one of the rubbish collectors plays their own part, gathering, transporting or sorting the rubbish. Collectively, everyone in the community performs a highly efficient job of recycling Cairo’s refuse. This allows the trash town to be self-sufficient and largely independent from the rest of the city. The place has its own rules, everyone is allocated their own patch of Cairo, no one would think of collecting from someone else’s area.  Zabbaleen even has an unofficial mayor.
Trash town has its own shops, cafes and a local school for the children. Of course it’s every Zabbaleen parent’s dream for their child to get a good education so they can build a better life elsewhere. More commonly though, the kids start working on the dump at a young age and follow in their parents’ footsteps to become rubbish collectors as well. The people of Zabbaleen do wish their lives weren’t as hard but feel no shame in their occupation. They see their work as socially important and pride themselves in providing for their families. After all, it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

New rules could spell the death of a "throwaway" culture in which products are bought, used briefly, then binned.

The regulations will apply to a range of everyday items such as mobile phones, textiles, electronics, batteries, construction and packaging.

They will ensure products are designed and manufactured so they last - and so they're repairable if they go wrong.

It should mean that your phone lasts longer and proves easier to fix.

That may be especially true if the display or the battery needs changing.

It's part of a worldwide movement called the Right to Repair, which has spawned citizens' repair workshops in several UK cities.

The plan is being presented by the European Commission. It's likely to create standards for the UK, too - even after Brexit.

Our society is completely dependent on technology. And the supply chain to make a modern smartphone is unimaginably complex. My company takes apart all the latest gadgets to find out what’s inside, and we regularly discover components from dozens of countries. The iPhone’s A12 processor, for example, is designed by Apple’s teams in California and Israel using technology developed by a UK-based but Japanese-owned company, and fabricated in Taiwan using equipment from the Netherlands.

Recycling is broken. There’s little clarity about what can and can’t be recycled, and the rules change from one city to the next, and sometimes even within the same city. According to the World Bank, we produce 1.4 billion tons of waste a year worldwide, a figure that’s expected to increase to 2.4 billion tons by 2025. Waste is an enormous problem that needs to be addressed if we’re going to prevent the worst effects of climate change. But recycling is the wrong solution.

A waste picker is a person who salvages reusable or recyclable materials thrown away by others to sell or for personal consumption.[1] There are millions of waste pickers worldwide, predominantly in developing countries, but increasingly in post-industrial countries as well.[2]

Forms of waste picking have been practiced since antiquity, but modern traditions of waste picking took root during industrialization in the nineteenth century.[3] Over the past half-century, waste picking has expanded vastly in the developing world due to urbanization, toxic colonialism and the global waste trade.[4] Many cities only provide solid waste collection.[5]

Three years of arguing with industry finally paid off, as the European standard EN45554 was published—a standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff.

Repair Manuals for Every Thing - iFixit

Haver you ever wondered what happens to your electronics go at the end of their life?
Every year, almost 50 million tonnes of e-waste (electronic waste) are generated worldwide. A large volume of second-hand and condemned electronic goods arrive in developing countries from the "developed" world, with a significant quantity arriving as e-waste, exported illegally as "second hand goods".
This film presents a visual portrait of unregulated e-waste recycling in Ghana, West Africa, where electronics are not seen for what they once were, but rather for what they have become.