🟤Trash Talk
Following climate problems to where they end up.
Trash Talk is about the material afterlife of modern living. This pillar tracks what happens once things are used, discarded, exported, buried, burned, diluted, or politely labelled “managed.” It focuses on waste not as a moral failure, but as a design outcome.
If something is produced at scale, it will eventually appear somewhere else at scale. Trash Talk is where we go looking for it.
What lives under this pillar
Articles in Trash Talk deal with physical residues and material flows that are often discussed abstractly or not at all. Typical subjects include:
- Plastics, composites, and materials that outlive their usefulness
- Recycling systems that work on paper but not in practice
- Waste exported, displaced, or rendered invisible
- Single-use design choices justified by convenience or hygiene
- Circular economy claims that stall at collection
The common thread: nothing disappears, it just relocates.
The recurring questions
Trash Talk pieces tend to return to a consistent set of material checks:
- Where does this end up, and in what form?
- What fraction is actually recovered, reused, or neutralised?
- Who handles the waste, and under what conditions?
- What costs are externalised when disposal is framed as success?
If the story ends at the bin, it’s probably incomplete.
Latest Posts from Trash Talk
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How this pillar fits the rest of the site
Trash Talk intersects with other pillars, but stays grounded in matter:
- 🟢Greenwashed & Loving It critiques the narrative; Trash Talk follows the leftovers
- 🔵Eco-Mythbusters dismantles assumptions; Trash Talk checks where the material actually goes
- ⚫Retrograde Planet adds historical context; Trash Talk shows the modern accumulation
If other pillars ask what we believe or what we promise, this one asks what we leave behind.
Why this pillar exists
Waste is often treated as a side issue—a local inconvenience rather than a systemic signal. But waste is where design decisions, consumption patterns, and policy blind spots become visible.
Trash Talk exists to keep the conversation physical. When discussions drift into percentages, pledges, or aspirational diagrams, this pillar pulls them back to volume, mass, and persistence.
If you’re interested in climate issues that can be weighed, measured, and tripped over, you’re in the right place.
Stay informed
New pieces appear here whenever something labelled “disposable” turns out not to be. If you’d like to be notified when a new article lands, you can subscribe below.
Trash Talk is one of six editorial pillars on Carbonated Opinions. To see how the others connect, visit the Explore page.