Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionA related and equally ominous result is that producers remained free to produce andrelease into our environments an ever growing number of chemicals – most of themnever tested for harmfulness. Jack Doyle, the chronicler of Dow Chemical’s history,writes that “only about 700 of the existing registered 100,000 chemicals used in globalcommerce have complete toxicological profiles” [2004: 11]. Regulators fight a losingbattle, often against active resistance from chemical manufacturers, to identify dangersfrom chemicals and regulate against them.Paint it greenA crisis of capital in the 1970s, associated with the US defeat in Vietnam and thesubsequent ‘oil shocks’, led to a major restructuring of the organisation of productionstarting in the 1980s. This is generally described as a shift from Fordist to post-Fordistproduction. Fordism concentrated and integrated the production chain within singlecorporations to mass produce standard products whereas post-Fordism organisesproduction through global networks of firms dominated by leading transnationalcorporations. 57Networked production has its origin in the East Asian economies and Japan inparticular. It introduced a range of innovations to cut production costs such as ‘just intime’ delivery of inputs and ‘total quality management’ aimed at ‘zero defect’ in goodsproduced. The concept of zero waste, according to industrial economist Robin Murray,is an extension of zero defect and derives, on the one hand, from the pressures exertedby the environmental movement and, on the other, from “the world of industry andits rethinking of production” [2002: 19]. Zero waste, he argues, is central to the post-Fordist “wave of industrial development … centred on electronics” and “marked notso much by a new material … as by the pressure to reduce materials and their toxicity… We live in an age [that] speaks of ‘dematerialisation’, of finding ways of avoidingproduction, of making more with less” [69]. And he goes on to applaud the WorldBusiness Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD) leadership in promoting‘eco-efficiency’.Murray emphasises the role of social movements and government regulation inushering in a new paradigm of ‘post-industrial’ production with design for inbuilt reuse,upgrading and recycling etc. But finally it is corporate capital that leads this wave57 See The groundWork Report 2003 for a more detailed discussion on the restructuring of production.Wasting the Nation - groundWork - 81 -