A Short Essay on the Idea of Waste

A Short Essay on The Idea of Waste

by Jeffrey Chan

‘Waste’, ‘trash’ or ‘garbage’—and whatever else you may have that stand for the ‘unwanted’—has always been a part of the human condition. Like us, animals, insects and plants produce waste and avoid their own waste. However unlike us, these living things cannot appreciate the full extent in the idea of waste, nor can they engage with the idea of waste deliberately or productively.

Rightly understood, waste is normally defined as unwanted things; things that are usually also thrown away. To be fair, waste has a stronger valence than either ‘trash’ or ‘garbage’; we tend to conjugate the word ‘waste’ in ways where neither ‘trash’ nor ‘garbage’ is adequate, for example, in ‘industrial waste’, or ‘wasteland’. But at the same time, to use ‘waste’ instead of ‘trash’ or ‘garbage’ also hints of an existential struggle—“I have wasted this!”—as if we try to salvage something before it turns into ‘waste’. In a nutshell, ‘waste’ is a much more ambivalent concept when compared to both ‘trash’ and ‘garbage’.

This is why to simply define ‘waste’ as unwanted things people throw away is also to underestimate the significance and the profound threat lying at the heart of this idea. Interestingly, we are unable to understand ‘waste’ without defining what we actually value. To throw away good drinking water is a waste precisely because we first value water as a perennial good. Similarly, we are also unable to understand ‘waste’ without some kind of a limit: if good drinking water exists in ever infinite supply for everybody, it is hard to imagine how we can be capable of wasting it. And remarkably, we cannot conceive of ‘waste’ without also taking into account the purpose in mind: unless I have an end goal, I am unable to judge that I have wasted my life trying fruitlessly to attain this goal. All these can be recognized as the paradoxes of waste.

While it is unclear if what is valued, limited and purposeful is always never wasted—(one can nonetheless waste one’s limited life doing what seemed to be valued and purposeful)—it seems however clear that waste is paradoxically defined by what we value and treasure most. For this reason, there is always a remote possibility that some of what we actually consider as waste may still be of some value and use.

Beyond the paradoxes of waste, the idea of waste is directly correlated to the idea of production and consumption. In production and consumption, waste at the supply side comes from the fact that natural resources rarely exist in a form suitable for humans’ immediate consumption—there is always a need to transform these raw resources into processed ones and some waste is always inevitable in this process. Furthermore, at the end of the demand chain, such resources often end up as extraneous packaging or empty containers destined for the waste dumps. While there are enthusiastic strategies for ‘closing the loop’ or ‘cradle-to-cradle’ today, these strategies cannot account for the sheer absolute increase in waste that must also correspond to the sheer absolute increase in the number of humans on Earth. In any case, if production and consumption increase, then absolute waste will also increase. Hence it is impossible for global leaders today to seek economic growth by increasing production and consumption while decreasing the volume of waste at the same time. To proclaim the glories of growth without detailing a sustainable strategy to solve its accompanying problem of waste can only be the babbles coming from an inconsistent mind.

This is why waste is without doubt, the singular man-made threat to the human condition in the 21^st century. With some healthy skepticism we may come to discount the severity of global warming; but no amount of skepticism can sway us from the staggering reality of waste. Already, there are flabbergasting estimates: that the largest cities in Asia will produce up to 1.8 million tonnes of waste in the near future on a daily basis.

In this context, managing waste has become a science. Experts in waste management are tormented daily with a range of choices, none too popular or effective, for solving the problem of waste. In certain places people actually pay for what they throw. It has been found that this ‘pay-for-what-you-throw’ has been effective in containing the problem, though it hardly diminishes the problem in structural ways and it is always politically unpopular. On the other hand, the next choice is to expand the infrastructural capacity that has to do with waste disposal. However experts discovered that an increase in the capacity of this infrastructure is nearly always followed by a corresponding increase in the volume of waste. In other words, the convenience of getting rid of waste tends to generate a greater volume of waste. Clearly, while this choice is often politically popular, it however exacerbates the problem. Then there is always the solution of just ignoring the problem of waste. But as a classic example near the Mediterranean Sea showed, it is impossible to ignore waste because it is going to smell (bad).

In light of these realities, some have suggested recycling our waste. However, it is dubious that recycling can ever be an effective solution for the problem of waste. This is because recycling usually means ‘down-cycling’—the recycled resources can only be used for products of a lower specification and virgin resources, which inadvertently also mean producing wastes, are always needed in the production process. Moreover, recycling can lead to the illusion of limitless resources, which inadvertently again, lead to more wastes. Furthermore, recycling is hardly an automated process after our recycling bins have been emptied. If anything else, recycling thereafter takes dedicated administration and line operators to painfully sort through what can be recycled and what cannot by rule of thumb—a process that can hardly be optimized. Thus, recycling can only limit the problem of waste in certain resource categories while opening up new categories of waste (e.g., sludge from inks produced during recycling paper). For all these reasons, recycling cannot be depended as an effective solution for the contemporary problem of waste.

Similarly, many have suggested composting. However again, composting only works for mostly organic matter. In the world of human generated waste, organic waste is perhaps the least of our pressing problem. That said, composting represents a viable way for greatly reducing the amount of waste. The catch however, is that not everyone who is inclined to recycle is also inclined to do composting. This is simply because the composted waste does not disappear along with the garbage truck. Composting is often a slow and smelly business, and not everyone can be persuaded to live with decomposing organic matter. To be sure, at the end one is rewarded with a high quality organic fertilizer. But with nearly half of the world’s population living in urban cities with very little meaningful use for these fertilizers, and with a good proportion of the world’s population living somewhat impatient and busy modern lives, composting cannot possibly be a viable strategy for everyone but only for a group of self-selected greenies.

Given that this is a growing and alarming problem of waste, and given that none of the choices we have so far are even effective for solving this problem, we may think that we are already deeply mired with a very wicked problem. Unfortunately, there is worse news ahead. Not only does the problem of waste lie unsolved; and not only is there no good solution, but also the kind of waste we produced collectively has taken a menacing turn in the recent decades.

In the past people threw out food-scraps, broken pottery and irreparable bits and pieces. But today, people throw out leaking batteries, unfashionable cellphones and wholesale toxic and hazardous biological and industrial wastes. It is sometimes remarked that the archaeologist of the far future will find nothing for our culture today beyond the contaminated fragments that would come to signify our present and wasteful civilization. Tragically, the growing cancer of e-waste, toxic waste and wastes of all type that ought to embarrass a civilized man have spawned a burgeoning underclass of human waste scavengers. These human waste scavengers generally perform the undignified duty of physically disintegrating the things we throw away in order to earn their livelihoods by collecting some precious scraps from this disintegrative process. In this process, they usually absorb some of these toxic wastes into their own bodies before transmitting the externalities of these wastes into their future generations. In other instances, these wastes creep into the water tables for their crops, poisoning them directly before these ‘fresh’ produce are shipped to every other part of the world. In other cases—especially for those who live near incinerators or garbage dumps—the ash and dioxins from burning waste have turned into a living torment for the populace. For these reasons, it is no longer sound to think that we can actually throw anything away in this globalized world; rather, to throw something away today is tantamount to having some of it come boomeranging back at us.

The severity of this problem ought to convince all thinking men and women (and children) to limit the maximal volume of waste to an absolute minimum—the minimum for the dignified survival and flourishing of civilized societies. But what is the minimum for the dignified survival and flourishing of civilized societies? Ineluctably, the logic in this imperative to limit waste also tasks us to consider the reverse of what is being practiced today: that human civilization ought to be steered towards what is minimally required rather than towards what can be maximally acquired. Given that the collective human civilization is being structured towards maximal acquisition and not along the principle of minimal requirement, my question will stand tragically without a responsible answer.

Considering that this imperative is all but nearly impossible today, the next most feasible task is to create a guiding taxonomy for different ideal-types of waste. By this I do not refer to the different kinds of waste, for example, nuclear wastes, industrial wastes, or organic wastes. Rather, I am referring to ideal-types such as the waste-that-is-absolutely-unavoidable (WAU), the waste-that-can-be-reused (WRU) and the waste-that-should-not-be-considered-waste (WNCW) and finally, waste-that-should-never-be-produced (WSNP). The fault for the primitiveness of these concepts is mine alone; but at least I hope that their primitiveness will reveal the clarity necessary for this taxonomy to be useful.

First, lets start with WAU. WAU is waste that is absolutely unavoidable. Without demanding much imagination, we can easily come up with a few—that few which do not belong to polite conversations at the dinner table. Beyond that few there are wastes coming from personal hygiene items and sterilization processes in medical care. The interesting thing is that if we try hard enough (without forcing) to include more artifacts from our daily life in this category, we may come close to answering the earlier question on what is absolutely the minimal for dignified survival and flourishing. This is at least one of the promising qualities of this taxonomy. In any case, WAU is an inflexible category insofar as the human population is concerned. If the world’s population rises, WAU will also increase accordingly.

Second is the WRU. WRU stands as an intriguing category today because its potential is somewhat untested. It is said that a distinguishing trait between the contemporary man and the modern man is that the latter has his cobbler mends his shoes, while the former simply buys another pair. For us to repair and reuse what we normally consider waste, a certain creativity is demanded along with a fair bit of virtuous tolerance for the improvised. Certainly no respectable homeowner would like to see his or her home filled with old shoeboxes improvised as bookshelves, or empty bottles as vases; yet the rationale of WRU asks us to ponder a little before we open the lid of our dumpster to proclaim something as ‘waste’. Simply ask yourself if this ‘waste’ can be repaired, improvised, and reused. For this reason, WRU is also the easiest category for one to tackle the wicked problem of waste—though the economy built on the selling of the new and the next ineffable product is less likely to agree with the rationale of WRU.

Third comes the WNCW. WNCW builds on WRU by asking us to reconsider the different roles our alleged ‘waste’ can take on. Perhaps the unwanted fruit peels can be composted. Or perhaps the used honey jar covered with a thin sticky layer of residual honey should not be condemned as waste but to be filled with warm water, and subsequently consumed and cleaned before recycling the jar. And maybe we should not throw our old Hi-Fi sets out, or those cathode-ray TVs that were imperially granted obsolescence a while ago. The principle of WNCW does not oblige us to turn our homes or our workplaces into junkyards. Rather, in view of the things already consigned to the junkyard that we have now in our midst, it asks us to reconsider our next new purchase—very carefully.

Finally is the WSNP, which stands for wastes-that-should-never-be-produced. The low hanging fruits of this category are the toxic industrial wastes and nuclear wastes—the types of wastes that are neither biodegradable nor civilization-friendly in the long term. On the other hand, the more implicit items in this category are the many frivolities one tends to acquire at a 99cents store for no purpose other than for the fact that they are cheap. I am not an opponent of the 99cents store; but I am a staunch opponent of buying something only to throw them away soon after.

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This taxonomy is useful to the extent that it allows for the re-interpretation of waste, and hopefully from that, also a re-caliberation of our attitudes and behaviors towards the waste we produce.

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Even so, the idea of waste does not tell us anything about whether we can in fact afford the entity to be wasted. To be sure as I have mentioned earlier, waste is only comprehensible if we also take into account on what is being valued, limitedly available and purposeful. But these paradoxes of waste still do not tell us anything about the affordability of waste in any precise way.

I have one last idea in mind. Let us up the stakes here on this issue. What would you consider as a waste that you can never afford? Think hard for a minute. For me, it is human waste. By human waste, I do not mean the kind of waste that is found to be of bad taste for polite conversations at the dinner table. By human waste, I mean a generation or generations of humankind wasted in order to cope with the problems of waste. Since I cannot afford to waste another human being, born or unborn yet, human waste is the answer to my own question.

Today, we are already witnessing the beginning of human waste. The large underclass of human waste scavengers grows by the year while the problem of waste remains largely unsolved. If it takes a great number of human lives today in order to contain the problem of waste, then I wonder what it would take to cope with this problem in the next 50 or a 100 years’ time? Would our civilization evolve an entire class or sub-culture just to deal with waste? And would countless human beings in the near future devote their lives solely to the mastering of different strategies to struggle with the problem of waste? Because no one can truly want to devote his or her entire life and livelihood to deal with waste, and to commit the lives of his children and grandchildren to the same task—I cannot imagine otherwise—all these must therefore tantamount to human waste.

And so if none of us can ever afford human waste but if human waste is inevitable given this growing problem of waste, what ought we do? The answer, while elusive, lies at the heart of what we will do after reading up a little on the idea of waste.