Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionIf poor people do not throw enough plastic into the bin, rich people certainly do. Inpromoting incineration, both government and industry are promoting a particularmeaning of ‘development’: that it produces more waste and more energy intensiveplastic waste in particular. Development, as the idea of ‘a better life for all’, is thusmade to serve the active construction of the market in throwaway packaging. Suchdevelopment, however, is not only unsustainable on environmental grounds. It alsoproduces, rather than alleviating, poverty and inequality.There is another twist to this logic of development. Markets must appear to be naturalrather than constructed, the outcome of consumer demand rather than capital’sapparatus of marketing. The state supports this way of representing things. Between2002 and 2005, national energy statistics were given a make over. The most significantchange was at the confluence of energy and waste. The 2002 figures showed thatthe residential sector consumed 9% of energy while ‘non-energy’ accounted for 16%.The 2005 figures gave 18% to the residential sector and just 1.3% to non-energy. Sothe proportion of residential energy consumption doubled while non-energy almostdisappeared. 84There are two significant implications: The first is that non-energy makes up nearlyhalf of the energy that goes into households. This would include packaging and allsorts of plastic household goods. Much of it is designed for instant dumping, havinglittle use other than for marketing, and most of it goes to the town dump sooner orlater. This is, of course, the waste of the rich and it is dumped mainly in poor areas. Ifincineration is to work in South Africa, it would seem that a sort of waste apartheidmust be maintained to keep the wastes of wealth separate from the waste of poverty.Nevertheless, it can be predicted that the incinerators will mostly be located in poorareas.The second implication relates to the politics of statistical representation: packagingfoisted on more or less unwilling consumers is allocated to household energyconsumption rather than being attributed to the industry that produces and marketsit, to the commercial (retail) sector that markets it again, or to the municipal wasteindustry which is the ‘end user’ of most packaging and the necessary by-product ofcapitalist development, an externality paid for by the public in taxes or in health.84 See Energy Outlook 2002 and South African Energy Digest 2005.- 118 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation