Final disposal: between research and co-laboration

How do societies deal with the legacies of modern ways of living? What residual materials are produced, how are they managed and by whom, and what effects do they have—when and where—on which people and environments? What solutions are being developed to avoid today’s challenges in the future?

In my research, I address these questions from several directions. Landfills, for example, are multilayered witnesses to time in both a literal and a metaphorical sense: they reflect social and industrial developments and technological progress, as well as the long-term transformation of environments through human action. I juxtapose these “sites of permanence” with practices of synthesizing and modifying the material foundations of our world, since these practices help determine which residues ultimately have to be dealt with. I therefore also move within the forums and laboratories of the transformation of chemistry proclaimed by the chemical (industry) and supported by politics—spaces in which the conditions of present and future ways of being-in-the-world are shaped, altered, and reconfigured.

From chemo-toxic waste to the search for a repository for high-level radioactive waste

In November 2023, I attended the 3rd Forum on the Search for a Repository in Halle (Saale). I wanted to understand why the search for a repository for high-level radioactive waste takes place “in public,” whereas the disposal of chemo-toxic waste is generally organized through private enterprise. Following this interest, I left the forum in Halle as an elected member of the planning team of the Forum on the Search for a Repository—an independent, self-organized civil-society body that brings together representatives of the younger generation, citizens, civil-society organizations, municipalities, and academia to critically accompany both the work steps of the Federal Company for Radioactive Waste Disposal and public participation in the process. For two years now, I have been an active member of this formative process, in which big questions are wrestled with on a small scale: What is the relationship between past, present, and future? How, and to what extent, can increasingly localized concerns on the one hand be reconciled with society-wide needs and responsibilities on the other? How can the search for answers to these questions proceed as openly and inclusively as possible? When must narrowing decisions be made, and how can discarded possibilities and unchosen alternatives be anchored in the procedural memory?

Between research and co-creation

My research encounters with the everyday realities of landfills and the chemical (industry) inform my perspective on the search for a repository for high-level radioactive waste. At the same time, my experiences in the arena of the repository search refract and reshape my ways of viewing the chemo-industrial complex and waste management. Research and engagement permeate one another without merging into a single endeavor. It is a version of building a bridge between academic research and public participation.