Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 6: Down at the dumpseach dump is tied to the local economy – reject chicken feed and chocolate at NewEngland Road or metal in the slag at Boitshepi. People have been recycling from manyof them for decades. In Sobantu, they created their own networks of information – sothat waste pickers always knew when reject chocolate or chicken feed was due at thedump – and informal markets.The informal markets were always in the margins of the formal market but beneathnotice so long as the value of recycling was marginal. The commodities boom createdthe conditions in which the formal market could recover value from waste with higherprices both for materials and energy. It is this, more than policy, that has attractedmunicipal interest. But the volatile pricing of recyclables makes this a fragile marketniche and it is questionable that municipal interest will be sustained as the globaldepression collapses prices. Volatile prices are, of course, a function of the market. Itis therefore curious that, within the waste management industry, the private sector isfrequently given credit for thinking longer term than the local state, a perception thatstems from the privileging of market relations. The long term in the market is in factonly a price swing away. The national state, meanwhile, has done nothing to supportor stabilise prices by, for example, requiring a minimum of recycled content in finalproducts.- 178 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation