From 10th to 14th September 2024, our network got together in Graz for our fourth workshop. It was a rich and productive meeting with lots of interesting talks and discussions.
On the first day, we discussed possible futures for our network with regard to who might participate and what possible agendas might be and started talking about the various handbook sections, how they fit together and how they can be aligned with the goals of the handbook and the overall network.
The second day started with a field trip together with Dr. Wolfgang Fischer around the industrial part of Gries neighborhood where we visited various sites of wasting and recycling like a scrap yard, a meat factory, a flower market and the “Ressourcenpark Graz” at Sturzgasse which was recently completely refurbished and produces countless instances of categorization, valuation, resource-making and commodification of different kinds of wastes and materials. Widening our view from these very local waste practices, we spent the afternoon discussing globally dispersed cases of waste colonialisms, trying to understand how this framing sometimes obfuscates more nuanced forms of agencies and working out how exactly it is still analytically useful for analyzing global(ized) waste issues.
On our third, we hosted a public panel discussion on “Zero waste in the city? Between activism and urban agendas” where Katja Sreš (Ecologists without borders, Ljubljana), Evelyn Rath (Zero Waste Graz), Mag. Christopher Lindmayer (City of Graz), Andreas Höfler (Repair Café Graz) and Dr. Yusuf Idies (University of Münster, WiM-network) discussed the possibilities and limitations of conceptualizing and applying ideas from “Zero Waste” to the city of Graz and beyond. This panel and the following fishbowl discussion which included members from the audience turned out to be really productive and thought-provoking on what is actually possible in a city like Graz.
All in all, it was a very nice workshop which produced a lot of output and ideas regarding future projects for the network, our handbook project and the overall issue of “waste in motion”. We are very excited to continue these until and during our next workshop in Frankfurt in spring 2025.
Authors: Miriam Kienesberger & Michael Wittmann