Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 5: Modernising municipal wasteA 1991 British analysis showed that putrescibles (food and garden waste) and paperwere the biggest categories, each at about 25%. A comparative European study in1995 showed putrescibles in Greece reaching nearly 50%, while paper was only halfthe British figure [Williams, 1998].Adding to the variability is the fact that municipal waste originates as much fromcommerce and industry as from households. In addition, industrial production wasteis frequently dumped with municipal waste. According to one estimate, the Sasolburgdump receives 50 tonnes a day of municipal waste plus 40 tonnes of industrial waste.Vanderbijlpark’s Boitshepi dump started as an informal industrial dump before beingturned into a municipal dump. It still receives industrial waste.Municipal waste is classified according to its origins, doubtful as these are, and notaccording to whether it is hazardous or not. It contains appreciable quantities oftoxins. Again, South African information is not available. In the US, lead tops thelist of heavy metals in municipal waste, followed by cadmium and mercury. Batteriesand e-waste are now the biggest sources of lead, after regulation forced leaded solderin steel cans and lead in paint out of production by the late 1980s. In the UK, leadconcentrations in waste from affluent households reached a level of 247 parts permillion in 1994. Other important toxic elements include volatile organic compounds(VOCs) and dioxins.The creation of the consumption society by capital provoked resistance focused throughthe environmental movement but reflecting a more diffuse public unease. This unease isperhaps the more acute because people are aware of their complicity in the productionof waste. The managers of capital and state had to find a response and, as noted inChapter 4, the first move was to focus public anxiety precisely on post-consumer wastewhere this complicity was most visible while keeping production waste out of mind.What emerged from these beginnings was the discourse of ‘ecological modernisation’which was consecrated by governmental negotiators at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.The discourse carries the purpose of representing capitalism – the whole system ofmaterials extraction, commodity production, consumption and waste – as compatiblewith the continued functioning of ecosystems. This is then called ‘sustainability’.This discourse functions on several levels. First, it allows for state regulation tocompensate for ‘market failures’ but at the same time gives increasing prominenceto the use of market mechanisms which returns regulatory control to corporate- 128 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation