Waste is a soundscape composition recorded on New Cross Road. The idea started after I read The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World by R. Murray Schafer. His idea that “the general acoustic environment of a society can be read as an indicator of social conditions which produce it and may tell us much about the trending and evolution of that society” (Schafer 1994, 7) inspired me to listen to my soundscape for evidence that would show neglect towards the climate crisis.

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The sound of HGVs for city dwellers is a keynote sound in their acoustic environment. Nowhere is this more present than outside Goldsmiths on New Cross Road. New Cross Road is a major road that connects London to Dover, being part of the A2. Schafer (1994, 9) states keynote sounds “do not have to be listened to consciously; they are overheard but cannot be overlooked.” As a society, we have become used to the noise pollution HGVs emit into our environment and, due to this, we have forgotten about their impact on our climate.

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Naomi Klein, in her book On Fire, talks about this gap in our thinking with the industrialisation of our cities. “The devastating impact of free trade on manufacturing, local business, and farming are well known. But perhaps the atmosphere has taken the hardest hit of all. The cargo ships, jumbo jets, and heavy trucks that haul raw resources and finished products across the globe devour fossil fuels and spew greenhouse gases” (Klein 2019, 84).

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The purpose of this piece is to isolate the sound emitted by HGV engines “to invoke the listener's associations, memories, and imagination” (Truax 2025), as outlined by Simon Fraser University on the Soundscape Composition Principles. By isolating the sounds of HGVs, “a deeper level of signification inherent within the sound” (Truax 2025) can bring forward the pressing issue of the climate crisis.

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The piece was recorded using a shotgun microphone. I recorded each HGV in mono to isolate the sound of the engine from the environment. This was done to make their sound more impactful on the listener. Andrea Polli, an environmental artist and writer, uses field recordings to highlight the effects of global warming. Track 3 of her 2009 album Sonic Antarctica, titled “Walking on Taylor Glacier,” puts the listener into an environment they would not otherwise be able to access (Polli 2009). Polli states in an interview with Angus Carlyle in In the Field: The Art of Field Recording that “we have an evolutionary mechanism where if we hear a sound, there is more pronounced expectation that we are going to respond” (Lane and Carlyle 2013, 23–24).

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It is impossible for anyone to witness the number of trucks driving in and out of London. Through the editing of this piece, by having one HGV blend into the next, I want to convey the vast number of HGVs that drive in and out of London every day to hopefully highlight the impact on our environment.

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I would argue that the sound of internal combustion engines (ICEs) suggests that we favour profit over efficiency. An article published by the Natural Resources Defence Council on the basics of electric vehicles states, “Electric motors convert over 85 percent of electrical energy into mechanical energy, or motion, compared to less than 40 percent for a gas combustion engine” (Boloor 2023).

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References

Bing Maps. 2025. "Route from Goldsmiths, University of London to Dover, Kent." Screenshot, May 14, 2025. https://www.bing.com/maps?q=a2+road&FORM=HDRSC6&cp=51.294886~0.613919&lvl=10.1.

Boloor, Madhur. 2023. “Electric Vehicle Basics.” Natural Resources Defense Council. Last modified February 1, 2023. https://www.nrdc.org/bio/madhur-boloor/electric-vehicle-basics.

Klein, Naomi. 2019. On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Lane, Cathy, and Angus Carlyle. 2013. In the Field: The Art of Field Recording. London: The Quiet Design.

Polli, Andrea. 2009. “Walking on Taylor Glacier.” Track 3 on Sonic Antarctica. Innova Recordings. CD.

Schafer, R. Murray. 1994. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.

Truax, Barry. 2025. “Soundscape Composition.” Barry Truax: Electroacoustic Composer & Acoustic Communication Researcher. Simon Fraser University. Accessed May 13, 2025. https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/scomp.html.

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