Toxic Legacies / Filtering the Truth
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices. My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
The concept of recycling has gained immense popularity as a sustainable approach to waste pollution and is embraced as a potential solution to our escalating environmental crisis. However, not all recycling practices – especially when it comes to plastic – are necessarily environmentally friendly. In many cases, claims to recyclability are merely greenwashing, a marketing strategy used by companies to position themselves as environ- mentally conscious without implementing actual changes in their production practices.
My master project aims to investigate the greenwashing behind recycling and how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system.
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(a) Molecular oxygen 32 g/mol (b) Acetone 58 g/mol (c) Pentane, 2-methyl- 86
g/mol (d) Pentane, 3-methyl- 86 g/mol (e) n-Hexane (solvent) 86 g/mol (f) Cyclopentane,
methyl- 84 g/mol (g) Cyclohexane 84 g/mol (h) Hexane, 2-methyl-
100 g/mol (i) Hexane, 3-methyl- (j) Heptane 100 g/mol (k) Toluene 92 g/mol (l)
Octane 114 g/mol
Conclusions that are possible to derive from the results are:
- Leaving the materials in the solvent for 2 hours was enough
to show many of the chemicals present, however the individual
elements of the cigarette that we left in a solvent for a greater
amount of time (2 months) showed much clearer results
- The three types of solvents used seem to desolve different
compounds to variating degrees, therefore, only samples treated
with the same solvent are comparable. In this case toluene
seemed to be the most effective.
- Production methods that enclosed the entire element of the
cigarette butt (filter or tobacco in wax) have higher traces of
chemicals than those that are merely submerged in elements
for a particular amount of time (dying yarn and textiles)
- All my material production processes have continued traces of
harmful chemicals such as benzene or even carcinogenic compounds
such as arsenic
The question is now – how best to convey this continued level
of toxicity?
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