Rethinking Rubbish: Why Waste Matters

By Georgia Cavanagh
December 2020

Why We Don’t Think About Rubbish

Without self-reflection, we may gloss over the idea in the Western World that we shouldn’t talk about, or show, birth and death - a tendency which transfers over to our dealings with objects, such that ‘the factory floor and incinerator are considered just as properly kept out of sight as the hospital ward and crematorium’. Further complacency towards the lives of our objects beyond their functionalism is reflected in the language we use, such as ‘product life’, whereby once products are not in our sight, they ‘disappear into that same abyss from whence they came’. 

“[…] disappear into the same abyss from whence they came”

Such lack of attention to waste was assimilated into Western modernity under colonialism, with its idealisation of organising public space and civic consciousness, including cleanliness and order, as indicative of a ‘civilised’ and ‘progressive’ society. The order of public spaces has become associated with a lack of visible waste, and accordingly, the term ‘waste’ has come to be associated with decay, disorder, and filth. Those that work in the industry can be stigmatised whilst we simultaneously remain reliant on them to maintain our modern ideals.

The invisibility of waste in Western cultures plays into the reliance of modern capitalist systems on continuous consumption - if we don’t think about disposal or the processes beyond the point of discarding, we don’t feel bad about throwing things away and buying new things. This feeds into a cycle of disregard for the value of items, and the neglect of systems of repair and maintenance, as discarding and purchasing things anew are made easy and commonplace.

Toxic Waste & Environmental Injustice

Waste’s potentially harmful and toxic components can manifest environmental injustices, for example in the dumping and transportation of waste to vulnerable communities, and usually from the Global North to the Global South.

Whilst environmental movements have resulted in tighter regulations surrounding waste and recycling in wealthier countries, this has resulted in higher levels of offshore disposal, as it is often cheaper than domestic forms of disposal. This results, as with many environmental issues, in the Global South taking the brunt of the damage caused by the Global North and its unsustainable consumption. 

Waste Economy

Of course, new economies of waste are created by such processes, and waste scavenging is ‘one of the most important sources of informal unemployment in the world’. As a new source of income, such processes can be seen as a positive, however, this does not negate the potentially hazardous and environmentally damaging potential of these forms of work and waste treatment. Furthermore, these processes serve to intensify the disparities between poorer and wealthier countries, and the North/South Divide, as new waste economies in poorer countries are dependent on global prices for materials set elsewhere in the world.

Recycling Economy

Breakdown is inherent in the creation of something, an inherent part of its ‘life’. As well as repositioning the importance of waste itself, once something breaks down, we should acknowledge that this doesn’t necessarily mean it cannot be used for another purpose. 

Recycling and economies of repair and maintenance themselves generate huge levels of economic activity in our current global economy, with millions every year engaging in occupations related to ‘Installation, Maintenance and Repair’.

Recycling is better for the environment than simply throwing away, however, we must understand recycling as ‘an economically productive enterprise no less lucrative and no less morally complex than other modes of material transaction’. There are negative aspects to recycling processes - much maintenance and repair work ‘generates the use of other secondary and non-renewable products, most notably paper’ further perpetuating the environmental challenges of disposal.

Energy Associated with Recycling  

In terms of industrial-scale recycling, it can require huge levels of energy which may be generated by fossil fuels. For example, Britain reportedly ‘imports so much wine that recycled green glass is simply used as construction aggregate; recycling it consumes more energy than just sending the bottles to a landfill’. In addition, whilst the best recycling is closed loop, such as manufacturing more glass bottles from previous bottles, ‘some materials are currently "downcycled" into less desirable products that can be recycled no further’.

 There’s No Such Thing as Rubbish

As an alternative to current modes of thinking, we could consider John Scanlan’s idea of:

‘Garbage as a phase in the life of an object that reflects the tension between recognised value and loss of value’, rather than the end-point of an object, incapable of future worth. 

Being more intentional about what we buy and what we throw away could have huge ramifications on a global scale, curbing the damages already caused by capitalism and preventing a cycle of environmental injustice. Of course, we need to take into account that individuals are not the main creators of waste, and the onus should not all be on individuals to make change.

We generally think of waste and recycling as individual issues to do with personal conscience, perhaps because it is easier than launching ‘the kind of mass social movements it would take to seriously change the modus operandi of powerful capitalist firms’. But it doesn’t hurt to try.

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References:
Alexander, C. and Reno, J. (eds.), Economies of Recycling: The Global Transformation of Materials, Values and Social Relations (New York, 2012).
Chakrabarty, D., ‘Open Space/Public Place: Garbage, Modernity and India’, Journal of South Asian Studies, 14/1 (2007).
Graham, S., and Thrift, N., ‘Out of Order: Understanding Repair and Maintenance’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24/3 (2007).
Hutchinson, A., ‘Is Recycling Worth It? PM Investigates its Economic and Environmental Impact’, <https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a3752/4291566/>.
Thieme, T., ‘Rethinking the Affirmative Value, Politics and Materiality of Waste on the Urban Periphery’, Development and Change, 51/6 (2020).

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