Household Recycling and Consumption Work

Social and Moral Economies

Kathryn Wheeler, Miriam Glucksmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137440433
• eBook ISBN: 9781137440440
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Ecología

Consumers are not usually incorporated into the sociological concept of 'division of labour', but using the case of household recycling, this book shows why this foundational concept needs to be revised.

1

Picking a Way through Rubbish

Recycling is increasingly high on the global economic agenda. As governments across Europe pledge to increase their recycling rates, the household or the consumer becomes an important target for policy interventions. Without the input and effort of consumers who sort their recyclable waste from their non-recyclable waste, targets like those set out in the European Union (EU) Waste Framework Directive to reach a 50 percent household recycling rate by 2020 (Directive 2008/98/EC) will be impossible to meet. In recent years, requirements have been placed on consumers to sort their recyclable waste into different fractions and, in some cases, transport this waste to communal sites. The active participation of households through the performance of routine and regular consumption work links to a new global market economy of materials reuse, which is only likely to expand in a future of scarce natural resources.

The contribution of consumers is the central focus of this book, which attempts to highlight how their labour is configured in an interdependent relationship with different actors and organisations in distinct socio-economic-political contexts. We suggest that by sorting their waste for recycling, consumers perform a vital role in the division of labour of waste management. The work of consumers has not been systematically explored as a distinctive form of labour, and we argue that treating it seriously requires revision of the conventional approach to the division of labour. ‘Consumption work’ challenges the notion of ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ as watertight realms and calls for a conception of the division of labour that extends from the market and world of paid employment to encompass also the end-user. Integrating the work of the consumer into the division of labour challenges this foundational sociological concept, which traditionally focuses on technical divisions of tasks and skills within a labour process. However, because the completion of a process of production/service provision is often predicated on consumers undertaking work before or after they consume, analysis of the division of labour would be incomplete without their inclusion. In the case of household recycling, consumers are now asked to carry out a number of related tasks which effectively initiates a new economic process (insofar as they generate feedstock which in turn creates jobs and profits within the recycling, processing and manufacturing industries), as well as reconfiguring public and private sector responsibilities for the handling of household waste.

Social science has devoted enormous attention over recent decades to the growth of consumption and the expansion of consumer society. By contrast, the flip side of consumption, that is, the corresponding growth of waste¹ and the problems associated with its disposal, has attracted far less interest. Dealing with waste may well be less exciting for consumers than enjoying the goods they have purchased, and traditionally consumers have had minimal responsibility for disposal. Recycling has changed all that, shifting a significant part of the work associated with everyday waste to householders. We suggest that this is best analysed as a transformation of an earlier ‘system of provision’² to one which now centrally involves consumers in the work of waste management. This book thus provides an important analytical bridge between the study of work and of consumption which are normally separate.

Recycling has generally been explored as a form of green consumerism – something that consumers engage with because of feelings of civic duty. In this context, participation in recycling schemes has been linked to discussions of the ‘citizen-consumer’ – conceived as an individual who uses the sphere of consumption to enact wider socio-political objectives. There has been much debate about and interest in describing the citizen-consumer in recent years in light of the increasing number of attempts by governments and campaigning institutions to motivate individuals to take responsibility for a range of social problems, from fair trade to public health (Barnett et al., 2011; Clarke et al., 2007; Micheletti, 2003; Soper, 2008; Wheeler, 2012). However, consumer power is not uniformly realised, and different institutional and cultural contexts play an important role in enabling or constraining consumers to act (Kjærnes et al., 2007; Varul, 2009). There has been a growing interest in studying the moral economy along with the growing interest in sustainable consumption and markets. By drawing together different traditions in the study of moral economy, we develop an holistic analytical framework to show how moral economies of recycling are constituted through interactions between institutional systems of provision, customs within communities and individuals’ everyday reflections on the practice of sorting their waste. We focus on the role that different organisations play in the construction of the citizen-consumer identity and pay attention to how diverse systems of provision create particular possibilities and limitations for the realisation of consumer power. The arguments developed thus contribute to wider debates regarding the success of policy initiatives in encouraging citizen-consumers to recycle/act more sustainably. For example, our research demonstrates the importance of securing public legitimacy for state intervention and listening to the lay normativities of those ordinary people expected to change their daily practices in line with sustainability goals.

* * *

The analysis in this book draws primarily on original comparative research in Sweden and England, and more briefly on insights into the organisation of recycling in Brazil and India, in order to make our case for viewing recycling as a form of consumption work. A comparative approach offers the opportunity to explore the specificities of this form of unpaid work within different national settings and brings into sharper focus the implications of the distinctive arrangements of work that consumers are expected and enabled to perform. We selected these countries because of their different historical commitments to recycling, as well as the different expectations placed upon the consumer. In Sweden, interest in recycling dates back to the 1970s and is connected to a long-standing societal commitment to protecting the environment. Rates of recycling grew significantly following the introduction of producer responsibility for packaging wastes in 1994, which meant consumers had to separate their recyclable packaging waste and transport it to one of the 5,800 bring-stations. In a system that is common across the country, 47.6 percent of household waste was recycled in 2012 (Avfall Sverige, 2013), with the majority of the remaining waste being incinerated at municipal-owned incineration plants which generate energy for district heating systems and electricity. In England, by contrast, recycling is a relatively recent addition to the household’s repertoire of domestic activities, introduced in response to EU legislation and pressure from the environmental movement. Much of the impetus for recycling schemes arose from the introduction of the Landfill Tax which charges a progressive fee for the dumping of wastes on landfill sites and has generated the economic incentive to divert municipal waste via recycling processes. Consumers across the country have to sort their recyclable waste from their non-recyclable waste, both of which are then collected from their homes. Unlike Sweden, there is not one standard recycling practice but considerable variation between local authorities across England, with the best local authority (Vale of White Horse District Council) achieving a recycling rate of 68.7 percent and the worst recyclers (Ashford, Kent) just 14 percent in 2011/12 (DEFRA, 2012).

Our analysis focuses on municipal or ‘household’ wastes³ and, in particular, packaging wastes and the wastes regularly thrown away in black bags. In Sweden, this translates into the förpackningar och tidningar (packaging and newspapers) taken by consumers to återvinningsstationer (recycling bring-stations) located in public places across the country, as well as the brännbart avfall (burnable waste) collected from households by municipal authorities and burnt within incineration plants. In England, this translates into the dry recyclables separated out by households (often within multiple receptacles) and collected at the kerbside by either private waste management companies or municipalities, as well as the general household waste placed into black bags or wheelie bins again collected by the municipality or its contractor. We do not explore in any great detail food waste or electrical waste recycling because our purpose is not to give an exhaustive account of all types of consumer recycling within the two countries but to demonstrate the role of consumers within a distinctive system of provision and how their labour interdepends with the labour of those within different sectors of the recycling industry. By tightly focusing our analysis on packaging wastes and general household wastes, we are able to clearly show how the work of consumers reproduces and maintains economies of materials recycling.⁴

Despite their differences, practices of packaging recycling have become commonplace in the course of a generation in both Sweden and England. By way of introduction to the two countries’ approach to waste management and as a precursor to an exploration of the existing historical literature on waste, we present two in-depth recollections from women whose everyday experiences narrate the complex interactions between consumers and changing systems of waste management provision. These accounts are by Ruth from England and Ulrika from Sweden; many of the themes that emerge from their narratives echo the historical literature on waste and the work for consumers associated with its disposal.

Narrating rubbish historically

Ruth’s recollections from England

My memory of rubbish collection during my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s is that it just happened automatically, and was something we hardly registered. We lived in a middle-class area of a city in south-east England in a modest detached house. The dustbin was metal, and kept in a porch opposite the back door. There was no lining to it and no black bag, and everything – all the domestic refuse – was put in: newspapers, the ‘clinker’ (solid ash) from the solid fuel boiler, and the food scraps, tea-leaves, and various waste from the kitchen that my mother collected in a paper bag on one of the kitchen surfaces. I hated this inevitably soggy paper bag which was always on the verge of disintegrating before it was put in the dustbin. Larger items were wrapped in newspaper before they went in the bin. The rubbish collection happened regularly every week, and the ‘bin men’ carried the dustbin on their shoulder from the porch and up the drive, tipped it into the wagon, and brought it back again. I remember them as friendly, especially to children and the elderly, but this memory may have been filtered through my favourite children’s book The Family from One End Street (by Eve Garnett), about the Ruggles, a large working-class family where the father was a dustman with a heart of gold who helped everybody. When he found valuable goods thrown away in error he took great trouble to return them to their owners.⁵ By the 1970s a plastic wheelie bin was provided by the council which was much larger than the old metal one, so that if you threw something in by mistake it was difficult to retrieve. By the 1990s this had to be taken to the end of the drive, but as my mother was elderly by then, the regular ‘dustman’ still fetched and returned it from the porch, without any formal request.

Thinking back, there was probably far less rubbish to dispose of than nowadays, and perhaps that accounts for it being an unmemorable task. In our first house we had had a coal fire before the solid fuel central heating was installed and whatever rubbish could be burned would be put on it. Other friends’ families kept chickens or pigs, or collected food leftovers to give to local people who kept pigs. Many clothes were used till they were far more worn out than would be the case today, or they were handed down from other children who had outgrown them and in turn handed on to others. Holes in socks and jumper elbows were darned (and when past darning, were used to polish shoes), and leather patches were sewn on to jacket cuffs and elbows that had worn through. Sheets that were wearing thin were re-sewn ‘sides to middle’ and worn out towels were torn up and used as cleaning rags. In the era before supermarkets and self-service, food was wrapped in paper, and my mother had kitchen drawers bulging with paper bags to be reused (as I now have of plastic bags). There was no plastic packaging and far less packaging in general. Milk was delivered by the milkman and the glass bottles rinsed out and returned daily. I have no recollection of thinking about waste as a problem or something to be reduced, except in the case of food. At school dinners, we were exhorted to clean the plate and remember the ‘starving millions’ on the other side of the world who would be only too happy to eat what we left. Waste and the environment figured nowhere on the school curriculum throughout my school years from 5 to 18; however, at my grammar school we were told not to be ‘litterbugs’ or drop sweet wrappers in the street especially while wearing school uniform as this would be bad for the school’s reputation.

By the 1970s I lived in London. The first house I shared was in a terrace row on a main high street and the entrance door was in a back alley behind. On one side there was a dry cleaners and on the other an Indian restaurant. Every week as rubbish collection day approached the alley became more and more cluttered and smelly. We were in danger of tripping over empty chemicals bottles with their distinctive dry cleaning smell, rotting chicken carcasses, onion peelings, cat litter and other detritus spilling out of cardboard boxes or pulled out by cats. However, on ‘bin day’ the dustmen cleared all of it away with no question about containers, dustbins or hygiene. It must have been part of their job description (unless they were given a tip), but I don’t imagine that would be the case today. The next place I lived was close by in the same borough, so with the same municipal dustmen, but in a block of flats where each floor had a rubbish chute. Everything that would fit in the now ubiquitous plastic bags was sent down the chute, and presumably emptied into the dustbins by the resident caretaker. Anything too big was left outside the entrance door for collection.

The final flat where I lived in London till 1992 was in a large Victorian house. There were three flats and each had its own dustbin in a low wooden shed on the forecourt. Every week the dustmen opened the doors to these sheds, carried the bins to empty into the wagon, and brought them back again. Again no issue, this happened automatically. At Christmas they rang the doorbell to collect their Christmas ‘box’ with the clear understanding that if you didn’t give them £5 or later £10 then you could expect to find rubbish lying around, or your bin not to be collected so regularly or returned to the right place. My other memory from this epoch is of a horse-drawn rag-and-bone cart regularly coming along the road; it looked incredibly old-fashioned and from a bygone era, even more so than Steptoe and Son which was still a popular TV series at the time.

Sometime during the 1980s the council gave each household a wheelie bin. This caused us a problem because they were so much larger than our dustbins had been and did not fit in the sheds, which eventually had to be pulled down. The wheelie bins were still collected from the forecourt, but caused a real obstruction on the pavement outside houses where there was nowhere else to put them. Later still, the municipal collection was outsourced by the local authority to a private contractor, Onyx (which later became Veolia), and at the same time householders were required to leave the wheelie bin on the pavement and take it back again. The dustmen would no longer fetch and carry, but just tip.

Of course there is a wider political context to these changes. I had friends who worked in nearby local authorities in north London and so was aware of the broader developments affecting workers as well as householders. Council-employed dustmen were members of NUPE (National Union of Public Employees) and had been active during the ‘winter of discontent’ of 1978/79 when rubbish was left uncollected in the street during the strikes of that winter. As part of a concerted attempt to weaken the trades unions, the Thatcher government introduced compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) for council services in the 1980s and all councils had to contract with whichever company offered the least expensive tender. Until this time, my impression – rightly or wrongly – was of municipal rubbish collection as an enclave for white working-class men. It was rare to see a black face even in high immigrant areas of London, and it seemed almost as if the job was handed on within extended families or from one generation to another. There was no question of it being any other than a male occupation.

Since the early 1990s I’ve lived in a large village in East Anglia. At first things were much the same as in London but during the last decade there has been a marked change, with new requirements to reduce the amount of overall waste put out for collection, as well as to sort it into different receptacles for different materials. We were given a green box with lid for glass and cans, four large white canvas-type bags for garden waste, large plastic bags to be used separately for plastic and for paper and cardboard, and in 2013 a double food waste bin, with a small one for the kitchen and a larger one to keep outside. However we create very little food waste for these bins. I can’t bear to throw out any food, possibly due to early inculcation that this was wrong. The normal ‘black bag’ and food waste are still collected weekly, but the recyclables alternate: plastic and garden waste one week, and paper and bottles and cans the other week. Council leaflets introducing the new arrangements explained they were a response to government and European Union rules and taxes in order to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. Recycling the rest would ‘benefit the environment’, but there was no mention of the costs or profits associated with selling on the various materials or who would gain from it. What we have to do differs from friends living in the adjacent town, and it seems that everyone I know has a different arrangement of which materials are collected and in what combinations, and whether weekly or fortnightly. Getting the rubbish ready for collection has now become a chore in the way it never was before: sorting everything, storing the bags for paper and plastic somewhere inside the house for two weeks as they get increasingly bulky and then keeping track of which week it is. The bin men (they are still all men) will take bags only if they are placed outside in the street, and will no longer even remove a black bag from a dustbin left in the street with its lid off. One man comes in advance several hours before the collection wagon and puts all the black bags from about twenty houses together in one pile. Then when the wagon arrives two men sling these into the back while the wagon slowly drives along the road. The garden waste bags and bottle boxes and lids are just thrown down anywhere in the road after collection and often get moved or blown about, or run over, so neighbours are usually out looking for ‘theirs’ in the day after the collection. Clearly the bin men have their targets and instructions, but dealing with rubbish is now part of my consciousness and a definite and quite time-consuming task in the way that it was not before.

Ulrika’s recollections from Sweden

Until I was 12, in 1952, we lived in Lund in the south of Sweden on the fifth floor of a large apartment house built around 1900. All kitchen rubbish was put in a bucket under the sink. It was my father who usually carried this bucket downstairs and emptied it into the bin. There was no bag in the bucket, maybe just a sheet of newspaper at the bottom, and it had to be cleaned inside afterwards. Milk was collected in a pail which was also was cleaned and used again. Fish and meat were brought home from the shop in newspaper or brown paper. Bread was not wrapped, just put in my mother’s bag. So there was not much paper packaging at all at this stage. We had an open fireplace in one of the rooms where most paper was burnt, often used to start the fire,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Picking a Way through Rubbish
• 2. Consumers as Workers in Economies of Waste
• 3. Environmentally Regimented Rubbish: Recycling Systems in Sweden
• 4. Market and State Heterogeneity: Recycling Systems in England
• 5. The Three Stages of Recycling Consumption Work
• 6. Comparing Recycling Consumption Work
• 7. Moral Economies of Recycling
• 8. Living Off Tips: Waste and Recycling in Brazil and India
• 9. Varieties of Recycling Work
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index