Ed Conway - stories of stuff

Ed Conway has written widely on the use of resources that creates our material world. This is connected to our Year 8 topic on consumption and the geography of our 'stuff'...

As Ed says in the introduction to the podcast - stuff matters:

The pitch behind it is each week we take an object - for the most case an everyday product you probably have inside your home - and ask a few seemingly obvious questions that turn out to have not-at-all-obvious answers. Where did it come from? How was it made? And, most intriguingly of all, what can it teach us about the world.

I’ve long had a feeling - something you’ll have picked up on if you’ve read Material World or watched much of my output for Sky News - that there are marvellous, magical, sometimes-disturbing stories just beneath the surface of the everyday items we mostly take for granted. Ponder concrete and you understand the bizarre underbelly of sand production. Consider copper and you look at the world of power afresh.

Well, to some extent that’s the idea behind Stuff Matters. Every episode is a journey deep into the rabbit holes you sometimes find yourselves swept into (well, I do at least) when considering the objects around you. So we’ve spoken to Nobel-prize winning scientists, businesses making missiles, the world’s greatest experts in how to ripen fruit, and a few other folks as well. If there is a subtitle to this effort (possibly also my entire career), it is that supposedly boring stuff is often actually tremendously interesting

On Sunday for example he posted an episode about Apple Airpods.

That satisfying snap when you close an AirPods case is powered by one of the most important materials in the modern world.

Hidden inside are tiny magnets made from rare earth elements: obscure minerals that help power everything from smartphones and wind turbines to fighter jets and electric cars. They’re also at the centre of one of the biggest geopolitical struggles of our time

In this episode, Ed Conway follows the story of rare earths from an obscure Swedish town and the Manhattan Project to modern China, where decades of industrial strategy have given Beijing extraordinary control over a resource the rest of the world depends on.

Along the way, he explores the strange economics of rare earth mining, the environmental costs hidden behind modern technology, and the growing fear that global supply chains can be turned into weapons.

Old habits die hard in Agbogbloshie

For over 10 years, we used the area of Agbogbloshie on the edge of the Ghanaian capital city of Accra as a case study.

There was a video on Vimeo called e-Wasteland. It is still available to view. It has no narration, but some text captions and the sounds of the activity in this area. It was made by David Fedele in 2012 - which was when we started using it. You will possibly need to login (a free account can be created) to view it.

I thought that the activity had ended due to new methods and efforts to educate the workforce into the risks they were taking - particuarly the accumulation of mercury and other toxic heavy metals into their bloodstreams which shortened their life expectancy.

This article from this weekend suggests that actually the practice is still taking place, so we will perhaps revisit the place, and see what we can see - the area of burning used to be very visible on Google Earth.

How to solve the Plastic problem

 From BBC Ideas.

TEMU

This website explains the meaning of the logo for the site TEMU. We mentioned this in our Geography of Stuff unit.

TEMU is like a Chinese version of Amazon.

It sells a whole load of cheap tat that nobody really needs in the main, and its website/app is a confusing place where visitors are bombarded with short-term deals in an attempt to get them to overspend and add things to their basket.

Some detail:

The name “Temu” is an acronym for the company’s motto, “Team Up, Price Down.” This motto encapsulates the company’s core philosophy of leveraging economies of scale to generate savings. By amassing a critical mass of buyers and sellers, Temu can pass on the savings to its customers. Sellers are attracted to the large pool of buyers, who are in turn drawn to the wide selection of merchandise provided by a multitude of sellers.

Another example of our throwaway culture which is causing such environmental damage to the planet.

From Sole to Toe: the story of a boot

A new StoryMap from Timberland: a company with strong sustainability credentials. This tells the story of the iconic yellow boot. It shows the global reach of this single product, which involves people from several continents, farmers and other industries.

Sam's Clothes

 Thanks to Ian Cook for leading me to this project from Dr. Jennifer Rudd. We already followed each other on Twitter as it happens.

This looks like my sort of thing. It is based on research, which has been developed into a children's book. I have been sent the various training materials and will take a look over half term. They include a series of lesson plans and associated materials for introducing ideas around sustainability and clothing manufacture.

A copy of the book can be purchased from here.

Inspired by some work I did on fast fashion, I wrote a children's book to help KS1 and 2 children understand what more sustainable fashion looks like. It also de-stigmatises the wearing of second hand clothes. You can buy a copy here. https://t.co/O8zqbwA3cl pic.twitter.com/fVYGnGzuSs

— Dr Jennifer Rudd (@jruddchemist) October 12, 2023

More on this to come... 

Stuff...

 

Barbara Iweins is a photographer who spent years working on a project called Katalog.

This is a visual catalogue of all of her possessions.

She didn't just take a photo of them all - every lego brick, every item of clothing, every book - but also considered their origins and the images can be laid out in different combinations. An example can be seen above.

There's a French edition of the Katalog available as a physical book - I'd quite like to see how the project is portrayed in the printed edition.

I won't attempt something quite on that scale, but I think the actual project is worth looking at for a possible student project on capturing images of their own belongings.

UEA: The Stuff of Life Exhibition

This is closely linked to our Year 8 unit on the Geography of Stuff.

A new exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre  at UEA has opened.

The policy as with other recent exhibitions is that visitors pay what they can afford under what they call a Universal Ticket.

The exhibition is called The Stuff of Life / The Life of Stuff.

In this major international exhibition, visitors will meet artworks composed of salvaged materials, resynthesised fragments, and e-waste. They will encounter new environmental zones, where synthetic and organic matter interact, providing a fertile ground for the invention of mythical worlds, dystopias and speculative future narratives.

These hybrid living-art entities have life stories that begin with the histories of the objects from which they have been born, and which tie them intimately to the things that construct our own sense of reality and animate our immediate environments. Through these challenging, empathic, and creative encounters with the artworks, visitors are asked to reimagine their relationship to synthetic materials and commodities designed not-to-last, and consider who is responsible for consumption, over-production, and waste streams in modern society. Ultimately, these artworks demonstrate the ingenuity of human creativity to re-imagine our relationships with the planet and inspire people to positively engage with our shared future.

Another brick in the wall

We have been exploring supply chains, and this week there was another 

Who made the bricks that went into making your house?

One would imagine they might have been made in a UK brickworks, perhaps in the SE in an area where suitable clay is found. However, this is not necessarily the case and they may in fact have been made by children in brick works far from the UK. Another example of supply chain issues and a lack of transparency.

After a year's investigation, proud to see our revelation of child and bonded labour in UK brick imports on the front page of @Politico this weekend

The UK imports 400 million bricks each year, many of them made in terrible conditions

Read more here:https://t.co/e72PhAf3HU

— Disaster Trade (@DisasterTrade_) April 24, 2023

Image: Alan Parkinson - shared under CC license 

99% Invisible

 

Another reminder of this podcast series.

There are hundreds of episodes, many of which focus on the story of a particular object or a particular place.

This episode starts with the story of Beechey Island, where the graves of some of the sailors from Sir John Franklin's lost expedition were found.

My friend Val has been fortunate enough to visit Beechey Island on a Hurtigruten voyage - what an amazing privilege.

Plenty here for units on the geographies of stuff....

Fast Fashion on Radio 4

A BBC Radio 4 programme which explores the area of fast fashion, which is something we explore with Year 8 students.

People online are debating whether contestants from ITV’s Love Island should be signing mega-bucks deals with clothes companies that sell people stuff cheaply and often - so-called fast fashion. Others claim it's a bit rich for the well-off to lecture everyone else about what's in their wardrobe? We’ll look at how fast fashion got turbo-charged, see if the stats on climate change and fashion add up, explore how fashion and social class have interacted over the years, and ask if “sustainable fashion” is an oxymoron.

Thanks to the Dress Code shirt team for the tipoff here.

Really interesting conversations on @BBCRadio4 #antisocial with @adamfleming examining the facts of fast fashion, environment and class. Well worth a listen. 🌍👍 pic.twitter.com/qFrISCTXZl

— dresscode (@dresscodeshirts) August 19, 2022

There's also a Radio 4 Bottom Line programme on the same issue. 

From the design desk to the shop window, how do fast fashion brands deliver the latest trends in double-quick time? Evan Davis and guests discuss fabric, factories and a nimble supply chain.

Stuff

"[Mother Earth] weeps and implores us to put an end to our [consumerist] abuses and to her destruction.”

Pope Francis 

"[Mother Earth] weeps and implores us to put an end to our [consumerist] abuses and to her destruction.”

Pope Francis urges world leaders to act on climate change and extreme weather https://t.co/UiQWRJ9eLO pic.twitter.com/EiKAYUiX9c

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 21, 2022

Gerrard Street - Headphones as a service

Thanks to a student Izzy for locating this good example of the circular economy in action.

Gerrard Street is a Dutch company that make headphones.

The headphones are of high quality, and once purchased can be repaired for free for a lifetime, with modular part replaced free of charge rather than leading to the need for a new purchase with most headphones once a small issue develops.

The company is used as a case study on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website.

Threads

This is not related to the 1980s TV drama featuring a nuclear bomb being dropped on Sheffield...

Threads is a new online game from the Global Goals Centre, which has had the involvement of a number of organisations.

Thanks to Verity Jones for the tipoff.

Go here to play the game.

The activity explores the product life cycle of an item of clothing, with different routes depending on what the product is, and several other decisions that are taken during the course of the journey... This is revealed at the end.

Usefully, the team has also created a set of lesson plans which are helpful for those in KS2 and KS3, and with a strong cross-curricular / Global Goals theme. There are 8 lessons, each with a PPT and an accompanying overview document.

Here are the details of the team that created the game and accompanying resources.

This is well worth taking a look at, as there might be something here that can slot nicely into, or alongside existing curriculum content and activities.

Valentine's Flowers

Year 8 are looking at the story lying behind the flowers which will be arriving in florists and supermarkets ahead of the 14th of February. I used this Google Form a while back to collect data on the places where people were buying flowers as it came to Valentine's Day. This is for a piece of work with Year 8 students.

The original toolkit book by Louise Ellis can be seen here in the GA shop.

Valentine's Roses

This week, Year 8 will be exploring the story of a Valentine's Rose, and the social, economic and environmental costs of its production. There will be many more flowers being produced and grown specifically to come to the peak of their condition in the week running up to the 14th of February, which this year falls on a Sunday. Normally at this time of year, Rose sales rise to their highest levels in the run up to the 14th of February because of the links between roses and romance.

I wonder what impacts the COVID-19 pandemic and the Brexit delays on imports of fresh goods, which would also include flowers might have on this year's trade?

We will be using a version of the resources written by Louise Ellis in her book written for the GA's KS3 Toolkit series, which can be purchased at a 15% discount currently from the GA Shop.

Stuff

Y8 - we are onto one of my favourite topics: the Geography of our Stuff...

Each item has a story.

Find an item and tell its story.

Geography of Stuff - e-Waste

Say miaow to Hypnocat...

A piece in the BBC News caught my eye today - always working even over half term of course. Geography never stops after all.

It talked about giving electronic items a repairability rating.

The article also talked about the WEEE directive which we cover when we do our unit on the Geography of Stuff in Year 8 in the Lent Term.

Here's a graphic from the piece looking at what electrical items we throw away the most.

Source: Southampton University - copyright BBC News.

The article uses this graphic from Southampton University.

Last year, the EU adopted Right to Repair standards, which mean that from 2021 firms will have to make appliances longer-lasting and supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years.

The UK government has pledged to "match and even exceed EU eco-product regulations" in the post-Brexit era. 

That makes me laugh frankly, when you read the UN report on WEEE and who produces the most.

The article introduced me to Material Focus.

In the UK, the WEEE sector body, Material Focus – formerly the WEEE Fund with funds via the compliance fee part of the UK’s WEEE system, has also carried out recent research. It claimed that the UK economy could save £370 million if all the old small electricals that are “either thrown away or hoarded” were recycled.

They are behind a campaign to Recycle your Electricals, which uses Hypnocat...

This makes the point that there are hundreds of millions of pounds worth of unused electrical items sitting in sheds, garages, attics and under sink cupboards in the kitchens of the UK. The manufacture of these involves the use of raw materials which are in limited supply.

ONS Household Spending Data

One for the Geography of Stuff unit.
This visualisation from ONS explores what people spend their money on.

Geography of my Stuff

Year 8 will remember me talking at length about consumption and the importance we place on it.

Here's an extract from a speech made by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak on the 8th of July.

"Our economy relies on consumption, especially social consumption...

The pubs, cafes, restaurants, hotels and B&Bs that bring life to our villages, towns and cities.

Taken together these sectors employ over 2 million people disproportionately younger, women and people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

And many rural and coastal communities rely on these industries.

80% of hospitality firms temporarily stopped trading in April and 1.4 million workers have been furloughed, the highest proportions of any sector.

So the best jobs programme we can do is to restart these sectors and get our pubs, restaurants, cafés and B&Bs bustling again.

I know people are cautious about going out.

But we wouldn’t have lifted the restrictions if we didn’t think we could do so safely.

And I’ve seen in the last few weeks how hard businesses are working to make their premises safe.

And if we follow the guidance, and respect what they ask us to do, we can all enjoy summer safely.

In turn, we need to give these businesses the confidence to know that if they open up, invest in making their premises safe, and protect jobs, demand will be there, and be there quickly.

So today, I’m announcing two new measures to get these sectors moving and protect jobs.

First, at the moment, VAT on hospitality and tourism is charged at 20%.

So I’ve decided, for the next six months, to cut VAT on food, accommodation and attractions.

Eat-in or hot takeaway food from restaurants, cafes and pubs;

Accommodation in hotels, B&Bs, campsites and caravan sites;

Attractions like cinemas, theme parks and zoos;

All these and more will see VAT reduced from next Wednesday until January 12th, from 20% to 5%.

This is a £4 billion catalyst for the hospitality and tourism sectors, benefiting over 150,000 businesses, and consumers everywhere - all helping to protect 2.4 million jobs.

But, Mr Speaker, we will go further.

The final measure I’m announcing today has never been tried in the UK before.

This moment is unique. We need to be creative.

So, to get customers back into restaurants, cafes and pubs, and protect the 1.8 million people who work in them…

…I can announce today that, for the month of August, we will give everyone in the country an Eat Out to Help Out discount.

Meals eaten at any participating business, Monday to Wednesday, will be 50% off, up to a maximum discount of £10 per head for everyone, including children.

Businesses will need to register, and can do so through a simple website, open next Monday.

Each week in August, businesses can then claim the money back, with the funds in their bank account within 5 working days.

1.8 million people work in this industry. They need our support and with this measure we can all eat out to help out.

How does this connect with what we explored about the Story of Stuff, consumption habits and the reasons why we buy what we do...