Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
a recycling network can lock a social network into a trajectory of 'unsustainabil-
ity' (Blühdorn and Welsh 2007).
To sum up: recycling naturalises, rather than reduces, 'glass waste'. That is to
say, it stabilises the symptom of multiple relations which go hand in hand with di-
verse problems: environmental destruction (using up more resources) and eco-
nomic exploitation (through capitalist relations). Both these problems are silenced
through the naturalisation of 'glass waste'. This should provoke further thought.
Of course, it can be seen as a mishap that we live in a contradictory world in
which the theoretical insights about 'glass waste' cannot be easily put into practice
and I recognise that the recycling practices are interlocked with wider environ-
mental policies and culture. The agency to change recycling is distributed within
and among social fields. Various agents, including Julian Berger, take part in
shaping the issue. I identified 'glass waste' as a site at which history has been and
is being objectified. Therefore, an analysis of (glass) waste would see the wasted
objects as social. To deal with them, solutions are needed which take into account
the historical, social and political dimensions. These dimensions are integral,
rather than external, to the objects. Thus, waste is socionatural -
attention to the
waste problem requires including, not merely adding, critical takes on the society
of which waste is part of
.
What needs doing now - a task for further research as well as for practical ex-
periments by environmental managers - is to investigate how agents can counter
the unsustainable trajectory of Western capitalist consumerism and production.
Such questioning should aim at a negation of
practices
which produce undesired
social and ecological effects. This focus on practices goes beyond only consider-
ing
ideas
39
.
To turn this conclusion into the positive and being inspired by Pepper
(2005), I propose that practitioners engage with experiments to change the social
situations which hitherto resulted in more, rather than less, waste (Krivtsov et al.
2004). For such an aim they would surely find as partners researchers and other
social agents who are aware of social and ecological justice and the problems with
unsustainable ecological modernisation practices.
22.6 Postscript
Four years afterwards, Julian provided a friendly comment on the preceding
analysis
40
. He stressed the meanings his practices had at that time. His prime aim
was one of “instituting a social norm” of “good housekeeping” within the organi-
sation. This was supposed to induce a sense which would lead “to further recy-
cling of other waste streams”. He assured the reader that implementing the recy-
cling scheme did not increase the amount of waste. As a trickle down effect, Julian
39
Practices have to change and the change of ideas might be only a tiny step of the path to
that. In that respect see Howard-Grenville (2005, p. 573) who discusses the ideas which
environmental managers hold and how they seem to be stable.
40
The quotes in this part are sourced from his written comments on this article.
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