Dr. Tetiana Perga

Heidelberg University, Germany

CV: Tetiana Perga has a PhD in History. Since 1993, She has been working in the National Academy of Science of Ukraine: in 1993-2013 – in the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, and from 2014 till now – in the Institute of World History. At the moment, she is the leading researcher. She is an author of 140 articles, co-author of 7 books, and author of 2 individual books that focused on different aspects of environmental history. She is Head of the Ukrainian representation of ESEH (European Society of Environmental History). Tetiana Perga is a DAAD fellow in IOS Regensburg (June-July 2018) and in Heidelberg University (April-May 2022) and the Fellow of The Volkswagen Foundation, Germany (June 2022-May 2023).

Presentation title: Not only horns and hooves: waste recycling in Ukraine in the 1920s-1930s

Abstract: By this report we intend to refute popular view of many researchers that recycling activities began to develop in the USSR and Ukrainian SSR accordingly during Cold war. Documents of Ukrainian archives proves that in the early Soviet Union the use of waste was much more extensive than it conseders today. This was due to the threat of resource hunger, which led to a sufficiently broad understanding of the concept of waste and consequently to the deployment of large-scale activities for their procurement for the needs of the Soviet economy and export. Some of the ideas and practices of a century ago have not lost their relevance today.