A market for everything

When I was in Montreal for the ICAO Sustainable Alternative Fuels in Aviation, I met man, who I will not name, who is very influential, especially in the financial world and the powerful (and old school) Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. He told me something that I believe is both arrogant and unimaginative at the same time: "Look, the world economy is at around $60 trillion right now, and it needs to be [emphasis added] at $300 trillion in fifty years. In order to achieve that, the concept of waste cannot exist in fifty years; waste will not exist in fifty years. Every output of one process will serve as an input to another process."

I can admire such a statement, and can be repulsed by it. On the one hand, who likes waste? No one, really, apart from those who make their earnings from waste. On the other hand, it is an argument for continued technologisation of our world (something that Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger would gladly accept), and it signifies something that I've been feeling for a long time--that in our control of nature, we have continually striven to recreate nature itself, or create our own "nature", as autonomously operating as possible. But, I digress. This isn't the main argument of this post. I want to go back to what this man said, that the concept of waste doesn't exist.

I can understand that cultures change, and that things that existed fifty years ago no longer exist today, and things that exist today might no longer exist fifty years from now. But I find the issue of waste (and trash) fascinating, especially because there is a market for something that we are all repulsed by. As I have said previously, regardless of your politics, trash and waste are things that most all of us want to be away from, and therefore, we do send it away. But at the same time, as Vanessa Baird has argued, maybe our economy is based around the generation of waste itself. This shouldn't come as a shock, for waste is big business in this country, and likely the same abroad.

It's true that we have made efforts to lessen "waste" and "trash" by doing something termed "recycling". But this doesn't fundamentally change the fact in our efforts to be less ecologically degrading (one can argue whether recycling is less harmful on the whole), we still have competition from landfills. When I visited the Ann Arbor materials recovery facility with Caroline, where recyclable materials from many neighbouring communities arrive to be processed, the good many that was giving us a tour of the facility said that because of the recently increased capacity of the facility, and because the facility started accepting #4, #5, and #6 plastics, that the amount of trash going to the landfills has now decreased, so much so that the fees associated with dumping trash at landfills has gone down, creating an "incentive" for communities and townships to send material to landfills, rather than paying more for recycling. There is indeed a market for trash, and a powerful one at that. How do we fight the market? Hope that "consumers will change their minds"?

When we create markets for something, we (at least for a while), accept the presence of something in the world. And with something has unwieldy, large-scale, and commonly produced as trash and waste, the larger the market, the larger the power. (A similar analogy can be made for oil and gas.) But I think that this points to something deeply fundamental and flawed in our thinking, and that is that if money can be made, even by doing something bad, someone will do it, create or coax a market for it, and then say, "Let the market dictate its presence in the world. If the market says that it shouldn't exist, then so be it." Such thinking fails to recognise that some things are inherently degrading. It is based off of the same secular, amoral thinking that has resulted in massive ecological crises and the possibilities of things degrading. We seem to confuse the possibilities of our mental capacities with real, actual, physical existence and implications in the world. The creation of options and possibilities (a market) is thought to be amoral an not value laden, and responsibility is quickly dumped on politics to messily figure out (or not) whether something is acceptable. For example, only because there is a "market" for acts like war do the possibilities of war exist. If the atomic bomb can be created, Why not it be created? many think. Why not then let the political decisions be made off of the actual presence of nuclear weapons in the world? The fact that nuclear weapons have been used "only" twice in the past sixty five years doesn't take away from the fact that nuclear weapons have been used twice, and that they have created an arms race the world over. Again, the same analogy can be made for most all of the possibilities that have been introduced into the our world because of such thinking.

I believe that such thinking can be extremely harmful. It implies a blind faith in "possibilities". People will always say that with the "good" of these possibilities comes with the "bad". But then again, this doesn't change the way we've been conducting ourselves in the world a single iota. Some things, some behaviours just do not exist in an ecologically sustainable, just world. For us to think otherwise, for us to be lead down the path of blind possibilities, means that we have not gained any wisdom from the knowledge we have; we do not learn from history and our mistakes.

The recycling conundrum

Back to the flaws of our neoclassical economy and its detrimental impacts on the environment.

A few years ago, I learned that recycling is a business. To be honest, it really shocked me then, and still at times I cannot wrap my mind around this fact. Many people recycle out of the goodness of their hearts, and take the time and effort to be responsible recyclers because they think they are truly being lighter on the environment. And so it might be shocking to them to comprehend this fact. But giving this fact a little more thought, I understand why it may be a business - in a consumerist world, we always need materials to make things. You can of course extract virgin materials or synthesise them, which requires its share of energy, water, fuel, human, time and other spendable resources. All of these resources are then assigned a money value. On the other hand, you can take already existing materials and reform them into the same, or similar materials (likely downcycled, not recycled). This, too, required its share of spendable resources. A money value is assigned to these resources. If the cost of the virgin material is cheaper than the recycled material, people may just choose to use the virgin material. People will only use the recycled materials if the cost of using them is competitive with the cost of the virgin material. Recycling is probably (?) less bad for the environment, but cost triumphs, always.

It was a wonderful experience to go to the recycling plant just south of Ann Arbor with Caroline. A complication about the future of recycling in the region was raised by our tour guide. He said that recently, the contracts that allowed Ontario's trash to be imported into Michigan expired. This may likely reduce demand for landfill space, and landfills may decrease the fees it costs to actually dump something in the landfills (called "tipping fees"). It may therefore make it cheaper for cities and municipalities to just pay the tipping fees rather than the City of Ann Arbor to accept their recycling refuse. This could cut down on recycling. But Caroline raises an even more salient issues in her post from a few days ago. She said,

"...we forget that recycling is actually a business, and the Ann Arbor plant is run by a corporation.  Ann Arbor is unique in her recycling ways.  Due to the fact that the city owns the plant, and that it is in close proximity to the city and the other locales that feed it materials, it is actually more profitable to recycle than trash our waste.  But would the city really try to motivate us if it wasn’t earning a profit?  Sadly, probably not.  Instead of dwelling on a pessimistic view, it does say something that A2 creates an environment conducive to recycling.  However, if we used less resources all together, there would be less to recycle, and profits would fall.  So even though the idea of recycling is usually linked with consuming less, a revenue threshold exists that needs to be maintained.  What I therefore struggle with is the contradiction between business and the environment.  From a recycling plant perspective, are we supposed to stop consuming?"

  

I wonder what the ideal world for the people that actually process the recyclables is. As an environmentalist, the ideal world would be one in which recycling the way we do just doesn't exist - we just wouldn't have so many products in the first place. In that case, the very need for recycling is nil. Yet it doesn't seem to me that the recycling plant is run out of the goodness of a corporation's heart. (Of course corporations are people and are living...right?!) If they can't make money, who cares about the environment?

Guest blog #15: Caroline Canning's thoughts on recycling

"I was surprised to hear that Ann Arbor’s municipal recycling plant is only a 15-minute drive from the Michigan Union.  For some reason, I imagined that the plant would be in a far away place, that it was a huge facility, spanning acres, molding our plastics into new creations.  Yet, when we got there, it was more like a large warehouse at the end of a road of landfills.  And, rather than creating new products, the plant sells sorted materials to other companies to reuse them.

Offloading materials

Conveyor belt

About to be compressed

Bales of materials waiting to be shipped off

As the five of us hopped out of the car, we were greeted by a huge pile of trash at the front of the plant.  It didn’t smell too strongly, and we proceeded inside to our tour.  Ann Arbor runs an outreach center that aims to educate its citizens about recycling, so we watched a video about the plant and its new single stream capabilities.  I think it’s great that the city is proactive in educating its citizens about what happens to their waste.  The intern told us that since July, when Ann Arbor made the switch to single stream recycling, the plant has seen almost a 20% increase in the amount of recyclables they receive.

Outreach center

 We then proceeded to take a tour of the machinery. Among the high tech sensors that help sort the waste, workers tediously pick out items and toss them into bins and onto other conveyor belts.  What I first noticed was the loud noise, and in a matter of minutes, I could feel a headache coming on.  The other thing I realized was that it was pretty chilly, even on a lovely day in Ann Arbor.  Okay, so by lovely I mean it was in the 40s and the sun was shining.  Even so, I couldn’t help but think that it was usually much colder, and the working conditions, to put it bluntly, kind of sucked.

Listening to music, and hopefully enjoying themselves

After the tour, Darshan and I talked about two things that piqued my interest: Why is it that we desire recycling, but forget about the people who are actually working at these facilities? How does the recycling plant balance being in the “business” of “doing good” for the world?

Although I didn’t talk to any of the workers, I suspect none of them were especially excited about working at a recycling plant.  We whisk our trash away and forget about it, and never think about who is handling it after.  It would be an interesting project to interview the workers about their jobs, and really delve into what they think about it.  For me personally, I don’t aspire to sort recyclables, but I would like someone to do it.  Is this selfish?  What does it say about the structure of our society?  When caring for the environment, shouldn't we be caring for each other as well?

Keeps coming, keeps coming

 People gravitate towards recycling because it makes them feel good about helping the planet and using fewer resources (in some sense).  But we forget that recycling is actually a business, and the Ann Arbor plant is run by a corporation.  Ann Arbor is unique in her recycling ways.  Due to the fact that the city owns the plant, and that it is in close proximity to the city and the other locales that feed it materials, it is actually more profitable to recycle than trash our waste.  But would the city really try to motivate us if it wasn’t earning a profit?  Sadly, probably not.  Instead of dwelling on a pessimistic view, it does say something that A2 creates an environment conducive to recycling.  However, if we used less resources all together, there would be less to recycle, and profits would fall.  So even though the idea of recycling is usually linked with consuming less, a revenue threshold exists that needs to be maintained.  What I therefore struggle with is the contradiction between business and the environment.  From a recycling plant perspective, are we supposed to stop consuming?

Waiting to be fed into the recycling machines

Overall, the recycling plant was thought provoking and (for lack of a better word) cool experience.  I would encourage anyone to go check it out, you can arrange for a tour like we went on and be back on campus in a little over an hour.  Check out their website: www.recycleannarbor.org"

~Caroline

We are not materialistic enough

Wendell Berry argues in Home Economics that our Western culture is not over- "materialistic," but rather not materialistic enough. This is because materials, "the stuff of creation," are cheap, and therefore, we don't value them. He argues that the way our economies are set up, we cannot afford to take care of things, because labour is expensive, time is expensive and money is expensive. But because materials are cheap, they are disposable and fungible, and it is not worth labour, time, and money to take care of them. Furthermore, in a capitalistic economy, an economy of transience, there is an inherent drive to make more money by selling more. Consequently, there emerges two kinds of materialism, one which values materials (cultures built and centred around low to middle-class income earners), and the other that does not (the world's rich and elite, which includes us, in the US). Indeed, we can think of cultures and communities that don't have that much, and therefore are more likely to take care of objects, respect them, and repair them to prolong their use and existence, as more materialistic. The world's middle income class, which earns between $700-$7500 per family member, like the poor, are frugal, use many objects that are antiquated by Western standards, and continue to use them through repair and recycling.

To serve our desire for new things, products that companies and manufacturers make are diseased with planned obsolescence. Tim Hunkin cites an anecdote of Henry Ford, who noticed that the crankshaft of his Model T was the only part that remained very much intact after the car had died. He therefore told his workers the make the crankshaft not as sturdy, therefore beginning the practice of planned obsolescence. However, thoughts on planned obsolescence date as far back as the mid 1800's. By reducing the time between repeated purchases, long-term sales can be somewhat guaranteed. The additional sales more than offset the additional costs of research and development, opportunity costs, and the labour required to maintain and service broken objects.

Alan Durning, in How Much is Enough?, argues for an economy of permanence, a throwback to the 1940's and 1950's, in which objects and products are created with durability in mind. Although sales will drop, and consequently the flow of physical resources and materials through the economy, the money value  of the services that people enjoy may fall little. Indeed, we don't buy cars just for the sake of having a car, but rather for the service that the car provides - mobility and accessibility. Indeed, a car then can be made a durable good. Furthermore, Durning argues that the total amount of work in such an economy is not likely to decrease at all. That's because the most ecologically damaging products and forms of consumption also usually generate the fewest jobs. In fact, high labour intensity goes hand in hand with low environmental impact. (One simple example is industrial agriculture versus community-based agriculture.) Repairing and servicing don't generally necessitate exorbitant amounts new natural resources, but they do require people to be employed. Of course, you can argue that such low-impact industries would "grow" less than high-impact ones. But you can't argue that continual growth is good. It is a matter of perspective - how do you generate value?

The history of recycling

Recycling is something most semi-pro-environmentalist groups advocate as a means to reducing environmental impact. Although I think recycling is a way of avoiding the issue of waste and trash, I see some merit in it. Matthew, who I met at Sameer's wedding, started telling me a little bit about the history of recycling, and how it came to be recognised. So, here's the lowdown of an online search:

From howstuffworks.com:

"In the 1930s and 40s, conservation and recycling became important in American society and in many other parts of the world. Economic depressions made recycling a necessity for many people to survive, as they couldn't afford new goods. In the 1940s, goods such as nylon, rubber and many metals were rationed and recycled to help support the war effort. However, the economic boom of the postwar years caused conservationism to fade from the American consciousness. It wasn't until the environmental movement of the 1960s and 70s, heralded by the first Earth Day in 1970, that recycling once again became a mainstream idea. Though recycling suffered some lean years -- due to public acceptance and the market for recycled goods not growing -- it has generally increased from year to year. The success of recycling traces to wide public acceptance, the improved economics of recycling and laws requiring recycling collections or enforcing recycled content in certain manufacturing processes.

One of the main reasons for recycling is to reduce the amount of garbage sent to landfills. Landfill usage peaked in the 1980s, when Americans sent almost 150 million tons (136.08 million metric tons) of garbage to landfills each year. Today, we still dump more than 100 million tons (90.719 million metric tons) of trash into landfills annually."

Click here for an interesting booklet made by the California Environmental Protection Agency.


From Wikipedia:

"Recycling has been a common practice for most of human history, with recorded advocates as far back as Plato in 400 BC. During periods when resources were scarce, archaeological studies of ancient waste dumps show less household waste (such as ash, broken tools and pottery)—implying more waste was being recycled in the absence of new material.

In pre-industrial times, there is evidence of scrap bronze and other metals being collected in Europe and melted down for perpetual reuse. In Britain dust and ash from wood and coal fires was collected by 'dustmen' and downcycled as a base material used in brick making. The main driver for these types of recycling was the economic advantage of obtaining recycled feedstock instead of acquiring virgin material, as well as a lack of public waste removal in ever more densely populated areas. In 1813, Benjamin Law developed the process of turning rags into 'shoddy' and 'mungo' wool in Batley, Yorkshire. This material combined recycled fibres with virgin wool. The West Yorkshire shoddy industry in towns such as Batley and Dewsbury, lasted from the early 19th century to at least 1914.

Industrialization spurred demand for affordable materials; aside from rags, ferrous scrap metals were coveted as they were cheaper to acquire than was virgin ore. Railroads both purchased and sold scrap metal in the 19th century, and the growing steel and automobile industries purchased scrap in the early 20th century. Many secondary goods were collected, processed, and sold by peddlers who combed dumps, city streets, and went door to door looking for discarded machinery, pots, pans, and other sources of metal. By World War I, thousands of such peddlers roamed the streets of American cities, taking advantage of market forces to recycle post-consumer materials back into industrial production."

From all-recycling-facts.com:

"Recycling has a history that dates back to the historic times. As early as 400 BC (and even earlier), people have been recycling. For example, archaeological evidence indicates that glass from the imperial Byzantine times were being recycled in the ancient city of Sagalassos, located in current day Turkey. There is also evidence that early Romans recycled bronze coins into statues that could be sold at a higher monetary value than the original coins. In hard times (eg. wartime), metals from everything like jewelry and coins were being melted for weapons or other necessary goods. Pottery recycling operations have been uncovered as well.

Archaeologist also deduced from waste remnants about the history of recycling – that recycling was a popular practice during times of distress. For example, less waste remains were found where there were also other indicators of distress such as famine, war and widespread illness. During these times of distress, new materials might have been scarce, making the recycling of waste necessary."

Trash in India - Let's import trash!

I had written recently about how Trafigura had illegally dumped tons of petrochemical wastes in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire. Indeed, the so-called "developing nations" have turned into dumping grounds for the so-called "developed nations." Well, here are a few more examples of this, in particular, dealing with India.

The Times of India reported in April about how a port in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu (a state in India) accepts huge shipments of trash from "developed nations," which contain not only recyclables, but more toxic and hazardous wastes as well. Just as in the case of Trafigura, it is cheaper for companies and nations to "export" their trash (and problems) elsewhere than to deal with them at home, because of "stricter" environmental standards, less corruption or what have you:

"But why are the developed nations dumping their garbage on Indian soil? Simply because shipping municipal waste to India is about four times cheaper than recycling it in their own land. While it costs Rs 12,000 to recycle a tonne of rubbish after segregation in Britain, shipping the rubbish to India costs just about Rs 2,800."

What do you think happens when you "recycle" your electronic goods (your e-waste) in the West? You might think that "socially and environmentally responsible companies" that you bought your products from or send your products to will carefully dismantle the products, make sure heavy elements aren't leaked out, and somehow reform the plastics, semiconductor materials, etc. into "new" products. Not really. A lot of e-waste actually ends up being shipped to "developing nations" where "informal" recycling takes place - computers will be smashed, releasing heavy and toxic elements into the ground, air and water, wires will be removed, and the insulation will be melted off by boiling the wires in pots and pans (that people use to cook). This exposes the wires, which will then be recycled or sold for little value. More sadly, however, is that people, men, children and women, sit over these pots and pans, breathing in the noxious fumes. I listened to one story that said that there are more than 20,000 people in the outskirts of Delhi that deal with such waste - informally and dangerously. All of this is in the name of "progress," "style," and "fashion," constantly "needing to upgrade" what we have and leaving behind things we've used. I will be commenting more on this in my next post.

Guest Blog #2: Dr. Forbes and Levels of Analysis

One of the first questions a good social science researcher asks before starting a new project is, “What level of analysis is most appropriate to study this problem?” Should I focus on individuals, organizations, nation-states, or global dynamics? This question is also relevant to activists and change agents who want to solve social or environmental problems (social scientists don’t get tenure for that). These change agents must ask themselves where they should focus their attention and activities to have the biggest impact.

While I find Darshan’s trash experiment interesting, it raises the question of whether the energy required to become a “near-zero waste” person gives you the most gains in behavior change at an aggregate level. As a student of organizations, though, my bias is to focus change efforts at the meso rather than either the macro or micro-level. Anyone who has read the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein can tell you that if you want to change individual or aggregate behavior, you first have to focus on the “choice architects” who both intentionally and unintentionally shape the way we make decisions about waste. These people range from city council members, government program managers, project managers in package design at major corporations, and even University presidents. What they all have in common is they make decisions within governance systems that affect the way citizens, students, and consumers behave.

As Darshan mentioned in a previous blog, the differences between the choice architecture around waste in Chicago compared to Ann Arbor are gargantuan. Whereas my old office at UM had a tiny waste basket inside a huge blue recycling container and the streets were filled with recycling containers, few people think twice about throwing paper or plastic or glass into the trash in Chicago. I believe much of this behavior can be attributed to lack of cognitive reminders (like the UM trash bin) to be more conscious. The choice to recycle or discard is still left at the discretion of the individual at UM, but we’re “nudged” to opt-in to recycling since it’s so easy to do. For me, it’s impossible to talk about motivating individual waste reduction before addressing the infrastructure in place to promote it.
It’s true that extraordinary efforts by single individuals (like Darshan’s trash experiment) can inspire change in others around them, but in the case of waste and resource use, I’m not optimistic that even the most well-intentioned person living outside of places like Ann Arbor and San Francisco have the infrastructure at hand to be successful in such an endeavor. I don’t want to end on a pessimistic note, though. All hope is not lost. There are small groups of sustainability-minded citizens in almost every community (I’ve met some inspiring ones in Chicago). I encourage these passionate collectives to focus more of their efforts on partnering with local choice architects if they want to see greater change.

~Dr. Forbes

Rubber

I was noticing that the soles of my Simple Shoes are being worn out, and I was wondering what would happen to them when the soles were completely worn out. The shoes are made of either recycled materials or natural materials like hemp. But the rubber soles made me think about something of a much grander scale - tires for cars. I remember Professor Filisko telling us in our introductory materials science class that rubber can't really be recycled, and that you'd become the richest person in the world if you figured out how. A few years ago, car tires could not be recycled. But now, apparently, car tires are being used for various other purposes once they have been discarded, but apparently there are more than one billion tires discarded annually. This means, however, that more than one billion new tires are being made from natural resources annually. Just as with metals, these materials are being taken out of the earth, and are now crowding the living space on the surface of the earth. Sure, recycling, or reuse of materials is worthwhile, but we continue to extract more and more materials. It is not as if we are saying, "Okay, our stock of rubber that we have processed and is now available for use is all we are going to have for the next 100 years, and so we are going to have to make due with what we've done so far." The paradigmatic shift is to move away from concepts of "consumption" and "efficiency" to the concept of "sufficiency," as Professor Princen says.