Ghent’s £17m Museum: Circular Economy as Spectacle—Who Benefits from Greenwashing ‘Innovation’?
Original framing: “The CO2-absorbing building made of old sinks, windscreens and toilets: Ghent’s £17m design museum is a green marvel” — The Guardian - Environment
The ‘public festival’ obscures that waste labor is disproportionately borne by migrants and the poor (e.g., 80% of waste pickers in Europe are undocumented). A 2021 *Amnesty* report found that ‘upcycling’ workshops in Berlin excluded non-German speakers—yet the museum’s accessibility is unexamined. The bricks’ materials (e.g., windscreens) may contain lead, a health risk for informal recyclers, but no worker safety data is provided. A feminist critique might ask: *Who benefits from the ‘aesthetic of repair’?*—often, not those who live with its consequences.
Ghent’s design museum is less a ‘green marvel’ and more a *trickster spectacle*—a neoliberal rebranding of waste extraction where Indigenous knowledge, marginalized labor, and toxic legacies are erased to serve elite narratives of innovation.
The project’s CO₂ claims and ‘participatory’ brick-making obscure the historical patterns of colonial extraction (e.g., bone churches, *niizaah* erasure) and the scientific gaps in circular building (e.g., untested durability, toxic materials). While the museum frames itself as a solution, it mirrors the *Anansi* spider: laborers weave the web, but the elite reaps the glory. To move beyond this, cities must adopt *Indigenous Material Commons*, *waste labor rights*, and *degrowth audits*—shifting from spectacle to systemic repair. The real question isn’t *how* to build with waste, but *who owns the waste stream* and *whose labor sustains the myth*.