Tag: pollution

knowledge politics by Josh LepawskyAug 10, 20263:03 pm

A satellite image of a tailings pond. From this altitude the pond appears as a large white mass with a bright blue water feature at the center.

Key concept: Upstream

Data centers are becoming politically potent infrastructure. But what happens before the severs they house are even put in place?

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyJul 23, 20261:49 pm

Paper collage. A photograph of the Atomium in Brussels, cut into diagonal strips and reassembled over a grid of numbers.

PFAS and Geographies of Forever: semiconductor and data centre edition

I’ve just finished reading two important write-ups done for Chips Communities United on the use of PFAS chemicals in the tech sector, one about their presence in wastewater outflows from a semiconductor manufacturing site in Washington state (Siegel 2026b) and another about their use for cooling of data centres (Siegel 2026a). There’s a lot going on in both of these write-ups, so I want to draw out a few key points from each of them.

data by Josh LepawskyJan 14, 20263:06 pm

Defamiliarizing ‘Tech’

In our book, Discard Studies: wasting, systems, and power, Max Liborion and I write about defamiliarization and problem framing. in the context of the book we’re talking about how personal experience with garbage and waste […]

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyMar 31, 20253:07 pm

Precaution, PFAS, and Pattern Collapse

In 1854 in the Soho district of London England a cholera outbreak was killing people. You probably know this story. Its usually told with a physician named John Snow in the role of hero who […]

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyJan 28, 202510:01 am

Chemicals and Coalitions

Chemicals are an issue over which a powerful coalition disagree.

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyDec 12, 20249:01 am

What is a sacrifice zone?

The idea of “sacrifice zones” has been around since the 1970s. Former US President Richard Nixon may or may not have written a secret order permitting such zones in the US.

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyDec 6, 20248:18 am

Sorting Out In Berlin

While in Berlin, Germany for HKW’s Participatory Planet project, myself and other participants visited an ALBA sorting facility on the east side of the city. The site sorts ~140,000 tonnes per year of waste metals, […]

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyOct 22, 20249:13 am

What is insignificant impact?

US geopolitical worries, largely focused on rivalry with China, have given permission for the federal government to offer an overt industrial policy for semiconductor manufacturing. The US has embarked on a massively state funded program […]

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskySep 5, 202412:25 pm

"Current costs to remove perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs), a subclass of PFAS, from the environment at the same rate they are being added were estimated here at 20 to 7000 trillion USD per year."

--Ling, A.L. 2024. “Estimated Scale of Costs to Remove PFAS from the Environment at Current Emission Rates.” Science of the Total Environment 918. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170647.

Discard Studies by Josh LepawskyJul 30, 202412:59 pm

Carbon Fixation

It is common practice for companies in the electronics sector to publish annual environmental reports. These reports can be very enlightening. After all, they represent a story about a given company in a situation in […]