The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [129]
It’s in communities that own the least amount of Stuff that you really see just how subjective that line is between waste and resources. I learned of this subjectivity especially clearly in South Asia, where I spent three years in the mid-1990s. There, broken, outdated, or empty objects were and are understood as potentially useful materials rather than items destined for a trash can. You’ve heard that expression “Necessity is the mother of all invention”? How about: Poverty is the mother of recognition of trash as containing valuable resources? Not so catchy, I know, but it really is true.
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, I lived in a house with a half-dozen Bangladeshis. Having a westerner live with them was a novelty, and they had fixed up a clean and sparsely furnished bedroom especially nicely for my arrival. As I unpacked my Stuff (some clothes and personal “care” products like my Pantene Pro-V—this was pre-GoodGuide, and I didn’t know about the nasty chemical ingredients), I noticed there was no garbage can in my room. So on my first trip to the market, I bought a simple little trash can. But soon I discovered that the “away” of my throwing things away had a different meaning than back in the States. What I threw into the trash resurfaced around the neighborhood, put back to use. I noticed my light blue flowered deodorant container on a neighbor’s living room shelf, now a vase filled with flowers. I saw my empty Pantene conditioner bottle again in the form of a toy: someone had stuck small rods through it and attached wheels, and a neighbor boy pulled it around on a string as a toy car.
Back in the United States (and in other wasteful, wealthy countries) we need to overcome the social stigma of reuse. What if “secondhand,” “used” or “preowned” signified an attractive, desirable option for everyone, rather than a poverty-driven necessity? Throughout our country’s history, when times have been tough—either on the individual or national level—our response has been to waste less, share more, and hold on to our Stuff longer. The economic downturn that began in 2008 again inspired many to rethink frugality and thrift. Waste haulers across the country are reporting a decrease in waste put out at the curb as well as a change in content: less packaging and fewer single-use disposable items as people are buying less overall and switching to money-saving and waste-reducing alternatives.5 Some recyclers are noticing an increase in bulk food containers as families are opting to stay home and cook real food, rather than eat out or buy preprocessed food.6
However, there’s a whole industry known as “waste management” that relies on a rigid understanding of waste. And since they’re making a bundle on it, to the tune of $50 billion a year,7 they’d prefer not to have us questioning their definition. To them, waste is unquestionably waste, and the more that’s produced for them to “manage,” the merrier they are.
This industry divides waste into several different categories based on the source of the waste, what it’s made of, and how it needs to be handled. The main categories are: industrial waste, municipal waste, and construction and demolition waste. There’s also medical waste and electronic waste, which are often handled separately because of specific hazardous components in each. Here’s a rundown on these categories:
Industrial Waste
Industrial waste includes all the leftovers from the extraction and production processes I described in previous chapters—the result of making everything from paper, steel, and plastics, to clothes, glassware, ceramics, electronics, and processed food, to pharmaceuticals and pesticides. It is generated by mines, factories, sweatshops, paper mills—“from fabricating, synthesizing, modeling, molding, extruding, welding, forging, distilling, purifying, refining, and otherwise