Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 5: Modernising municipal wastecapital. Second, it promotes stakeholder participation to manage the relation betweencontending social interests but in a way that obscures unequal relations of powerbetween the social actors representing those interests. Third, it has deployed an evermore detailed scientific language and practice for managing waste.Box 19: Household hazardous wasteHousehold items containing hazardous substances that end up in municipal wasteinclude:- Batteries- Chemical drain openers- Oven cleaners- Metal cleaners and polishers- Used motor oil, automotive fuel additives, carburettor and fuel injectioncleaners and starter fluids- Grease and rust solvents- Refrigerants in fridges and air-conditioners- Paints, paint thinners, strippers and removers- Adhesives- Herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and wood preservatives- Asbestos containing materialsHazardous elements and compounds in these products include: metals such as lead,cadmium, mercury and nickel, and chemical compounds including acrylic acid,aniline, arsenic, benzene, chlordane, chlorinated phenols, chlorobenzene, methylenechloride, nitrobenzene, warfarin (rat poison) and xylene.Source: Pichtel 2005: 75Up to the 1970s, writes waste management professor John Pichtel, waste volumeswere scarcely measured and “the chemical, physical and biological properties ofthe municipal solid waste stream were of little or no concern” to waste companies,municipalities or citizens. “The primary concerns regarding waste management were,at the time, aesthetic and economic, i.e., removing nuisance materials from the curb orthe dumpster quickly and conveniently, and at the lowest possible cost” [2005: 3].A series of scandals punctured this complaisance. Love Canal became a householdname in the US in the late 1970s, as production waste buried in the 1940s and 1950sWasting the Nation - groundWork - 129 -