Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork
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Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of productionof development and shapes <strong>the</strong> new world of clean production. “In <strong>the</strong> words of EdgarWoolard Jr, former chairman of DuPont, ‘The goal is zero: zero accidents, zero waste,zero emissions’” [71].This representation of green capitalism, in a book written for Greenpeace, could notbe fur<strong>the</strong>r from <strong>the</strong> experience of actual networked production and it fundamentallymistakes <strong>the</strong> nature of capital. First, <strong>the</strong> new wave of development has been accompaniedby a new wave of waste precisely from <strong>the</strong> cutting edge sector of electronics, as shownin Box 13.Second, global production networks have located <strong>the</strong> dirty end of <strong>the</strong> productionchain in <strong>the</strong> global South giving <strong>the</strong> North <strong>the</strong> appearance of clean production. This isan uneven process but, schematically, what has emerged is a triangular ordering of <strong>the</strong>global economy. Raw materials from Africa and Latin America are taken to <strong>the</strong> Asianfactory to produce goods consumed in <strong>the</strong> North. This flow of resources is largelymanaged by Nor<strong>the</strong>rn transnational corporations who also determine <strong>the</strong> technologiesof production, control product development and allocate ‘value’ – or profits – through<strong>the</strong> network. Heavy pollution in China, and recent scandals involving <strong>the</strong> contaminationof goods produced <strong>the</strong>re, has as much to do with cost cutting imposed by Nor<strong>the</strong>rnlead firms as with cowboy development in <strong>the</strong> wild East. Europe, in Murray’s view, isleading <strong>the</strong> revolution in clean production. A critical European perspective on this isgiven by environmentalist Wolfgang Sachs in Box 14.Third, <strong>the</strong> management of production networks is counted as ‘services’ ra<strong>the</strong>r than‘industry’. The transition from high energy industrial to low energy service economiesis generally represented as inherent to <strong>the</strong> trajectory of development: where <strong>the</strong>(post)industrial developed world leads, <strong>the</strong> developing world will follow as <strong>the</strong>y ‘catchup’. But first <strong>the</strong>y must pass through <strong>the</strong> stage of industrialisation. To <strong>the</strong> contrary,however, <strong>the</strong> service economies are possible only on <strong>the</strong> basis of <strong>the</strong> global structuringof production described above and <strong>the</strong>y rely on <strong>the</strong> unequal global division of labour.This brings us to <strong>the</strong> fourth problem – <strong>the</strong> wasting of people. Globally, and in individualcountries as labour scholars Edward Webster and Karl von Holdt [2005] have shownfor South Africa, <strong>the</strong> world of work is increasingly unequal and divided into threemajor ‘zones’: a shrinking core of permanent and well skilled workers with substantiallabour rights; a growing ‘non-core’ of insecure casualised and contract workers who can<strong>Wasting</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Nation</strong> - groundWork - 83 -