Plastic is political. Throughout the summer, in voices of experts, municipal workers and recyclers, there seemed to be a contest. There were technocratic solutions to the problem of managing plastics as well as positions that held that plastic processing infrastructures are inherently political. Within the latter category, NGOs, trade unions and workers were confident that […]

The area surrounding the Deonar dumping ground in Mumbai is dotted with municipal trucks and small scrap shops. The number of these informal waste segregation units steadily rise as one moves closer to the dumping ground. At one end of the road lies the “600 tenement” dry waste segregation station. This is the formal segregation […]

Hi readers! My name is Adwaita, and I am a PhD. Student in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. I am excited to start my fieldwork in Mumbai this summer aided by CASI’s summer research funds. As part of my larger dissertation work, I focus on the challenge of understanding plastics in the urban. The […]