Rolando Politi has founded the All Women Waste Workers Co-Op. Contribute if you can!

Yanbuki Rolando Politi (in the red hat) sent this message recently:

Dear Yanbukis and Friends,

The message for 2011 is: DONT RECYCLE, REINCARNATE. My work name and mail still is “recycle and pray” but my spirit and actions will be more accurately described as “reincarnate and pray”. The reason being that over the years the terminology of recycling has multiplied: upcycle, repurpose, reuse, redirect etc. – they all boil down to marketing niche ploy labels. After 25 years of field observations, I have concluded that the purity of the original concept of a recycling life has been tarnished

If labels are needed for communication, I prefer to restore the “meat” into the garbage, thus using the more spiritual term of reincarnation for the newly created lives of trash. The original idea of Trash Worship has never changed since its inception, and that is the SELF-VANISHING prophecy of one day having no longer any waste to reincarnate!!!! I myself can’t wait to one day no longer have to reincarnate and pray.

In conclusion, I encourage everyone to maintain a critical eye toward “recycling,” specifically in the ways the western/rich nations have been managing it. In this respect, the poorer nations are “purer” since they still mostly reincarnate the garbage into a useful life rebirth – but alas! they also are now under attack in the name of western-like progress with encroaching racket-controlled recycling operations… such is the current case in cities like Cairo, Delhi and others. Also see a recent address by latin american indios at the U.N. specifically dealing with the issue. However, the U. N is way too removed from the field situation and best is always to act very locally and reincarnate humbly.

My focus for 2011 will be to foster neighborhood reincarnations of bottle caps and lids. I can be found on facebook under the guise of Kappo Kappino now.
Wishing all of you a very happy SOLSTICE…

Reincarnate and Pray

This radical gang is ready for action. Check out each one here.

You may have seen the sensational art pics making the rounds, but I’m sticking to this one. Like a shot heard ’round the world, this photo got a lot of people into trash activism. Captain Charles Moore, founder of Algalita Marine Research Foundation, came across the Pacific Trash Vortex in 1997 and since then it’s become the subject of scientific study and media attention. This photo of a dead albatross chick was taken on Kure Atoll by Cynthia Vanderlip, manager of the State of Hawaii’s Kure Atoll Wildlife Sanctuary.

Big wow and thanx to Annie Leonard for The Story of Stuff!

Doing some research for the “old news, still good” department, I came across the Atlantic garbage patch story again. But wait, there’s more! Look here to see all five known gyres. Today’s find is this trashpicking blog I came across, The Repurpose-Driven Life. I filed it under “shopping.”

I gotta say that trashpicking only rocks if you have the luxury of doing it for fun, not when your life depends on it. Then it pretty much sucks. Go check out everydaytrash.com for a juicy link on Agbogbloshie . . .

Rolando Politi went to Copenhagen this summer for cap activism.

Wow, sometimes it’s good to check out what’s going on outside my head. Look what I found today:

It’s part of the Plastiki project…  recently arrived in Sydney. Click here for an entertaining critique.

King Leopold II of Belgium was a greedy and cruel colonial rapist – fuck him. I say take down all his statues. But Brussels knitta-gang “Tricot Trottoir” knit a string of plastic hands to place around his statue behind the Royal Palace to commemorate the atrocities of the colonial period. Atrocities like this: “Villages who failed to meet the rubber collection quotas were required to pay the remaining amount in cut hands, where each hand would prove a kill.” The Democratic Republic of Congo won independence from Belgian rule on June 30, 1960, and soon-to-be-assassinated Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba gave a kick-ass speech to mark the occasion. Oh, but back to plastic: love the hood-mask this plastiekfabrique girl’s wearing!

I’ll be in Copenhagen Saturday December 12 to Wednesday the 16th… fun!