Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Plastic Passport
Hazardous Hope Part 4 By Simone Müller (*Featured image: Photo by Gerry & Bonni [CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons) On our way out of office? In leadership counseling, they tell you about three key considerations for deciding if you should fire someone: 1) Did the person receive adequate feedback? 2) Did the person…
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New Hope for Plastic Waste Pollution?
Hazardous Hope Part 3 By Jonas Stuck In 2016, a new actor entered the main stage and brought new optimism into the fight against plastic waste pollution. Let me introduce Ideonella sakaiensis. A group of researchers from the Kyoto Institute of Technology and Keio University discovered this bacterium outside a plastic bottle recycling factory in…
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Hope in the Murky Waters of the International Shipping Industry
Hazardous Hope Part 2 By Ayushi Dhawan (*Featured image: CTG. Ship Breaking 06. Photo by Naquib Hossain [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr) This summer, I went on a field trip to Alang-Sosiya in the northwestern state of Gujarat, India, where geriatric vessels are anchored in the shipbreaking yards for their not-so-respectful funeral rights. They are taken apart…
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For a Dignified Life
Hazardous Hope Part 1 “Remediation Practices in Ecuador†by Maximilian Feichtner (*Featured image © Theresa Leisgang) Like a tiny mushroom, hope is growing in the once-lush rain forest of the Amazon in northeastern Ecuador: bioremediation as a solution to the extensive environmental contamination. It is a hazardous hope, however. Hazardous because it relates to a dangerous…
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Hazardous Hope—The Debate
“An Academic Play in One Act†by Simone M. Müller, Ayushi Dhawan, Maximilian Feichtner, and Jonas Stuck [Four scholars stare at their computers. They enter the virtual stage through Skype. It’s a global conversation crossing 3,5 continents, 4 countries, and 3 time zones: it’s the middle of the night in one place, early morning in…