In a previous post, I shared some photographs by Edward Burtynsky of oil fields and mines. Burtynsky takes pictures with an eye towards the modern global economy. This set documents massive piles of waste sorted for recycling:
Three pictures of the Oxford tire pile in Westley, California (1999):
Densified Oil Drums in Hamilton, Ontario (1997):
Metal for recycling in Hamilton, Ontario (1997):
Metal for recycling in Hamilton, Ontario (1997):
Plastic toy parts in Guiyu, Guangdong Province (2004):
Circuit boards in Guiyu, Guangdong Province (2004):
Recycling work station (I believe the worker is taking apart computers) in Zenguo, Zhejiang Province (2004):
Comments 13
rrsafety — December 27, 2008
Thanks for those pictures.
I just spent the morning after christmas crushing boxes for recycling pickup...
Business Memes » BURTYNSKY: FACTORY WORK IN CHINA — December 30, 2008
[...] Burtynsky. One featured his images of mines and oil fields; the other featured his images of massive recycling efforts. In this post, I feature his images of factory life in [...]
easyVegan.info » Blog Archive » easyVegan Link Sanctuary, 2008-12-30 — January 10, 2009
[...] Sociological Images: BURTYNSKY: WASTE AND RECYCLING [...]
Gabriel Gadfly — April 5, 2009
Pretty cool images. We make such large amounts of waste.
Kimberly @ Exotic Animal Lover Blog — April 16, 2009
Wow...that's crazy!
I live 25 min from Hamilton and they have some serious steel factories there!
Interesting photos - thanks for sharing!
Kimberly
Fredd — May 7, 2009
You could build some wicked houses with all those tyres and oil drums
Anonymous — June 29, 2009
what looks like portraits on canadian recycle cubes seems sardonic,..., so , ironically, given context purport, addicted
Uncle B — July 21, 2009
Now that recycling has come into its own, can we get down to using solar, wind, wave, tidal and geothermal power, the perpetual power sources, or renewable if you prefer! Next, engineering products for total and low energy recycling, as well as banning the American vulture parasite capitalist process of adding "Planned Obsolescence" to products to boost sales, can make for longer product use, better recoveries and a happy world population! Perhaps, much to our greater pleasure the Communist Chinese revolution now occurring in the world can rid us of these unwelcome parasites of industry and build a better world for all! The American System has certainly let its people down, Just look at Detroit City and the fall of GM (America) as the vulture capitalists moved to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong markets and built the now extremely successful GM(China) and prospered, but left the American folks holding the bag! - a bag of soon to be worthless American Dollars! All the while, their own money tied up in the very safe "Yuan"! goddamn! Yes we recycle in Canada, and send all of it to China for re-manufacture, and no! we don't have jobs either! Goddamn! What went wrong?
Anonymous — August 7, 2009
hahaha i live in hamilton and it's terrible.
Anonymous — December 17, 2009
fuck
Beautiful Pictures of Terrible Things « O, Pioneers! — January 26, 2011
[...] Burtynsky, and the Gerald Peters Gallery. Hat tip for the artists to Sociological Images here, here and [...]
RECYCLING — May 14, 2021
It's good that our protesters do not see this, they would quickly come here and transport all these tires to us on the streets of peaceful cities. And then we would breathe this smoke from their burning. But luckily it will all be overworked and they will not disturb us (I hope).