Negotiating the new economic order of waste

Environmental History

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 262-289

  Brownell, Emily ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEVELOPING WORLD; ECONOMIC HISTORY; ECONOMIC RELATIONS; ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; FINANCIAL CRISIS; NORTH-SOUTH RELATIONS; OIL INDUSTRY; RECYCLING; RESOURCE MANAGEMENT; WASTE DISPOSAL;

EID: 79960078988     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: 19308892     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/emr030     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. "Let Them Eat Pollution," The Economist (February 8, 1992): 66.
2. "Let Them Eat Pollution," The Economist (1992): 66. Ibid.
3. According to the EPA, resource recovery "encompasses both recovery of materials and energy from waste." See The RCRA Practice Manual, ed. Theodore L. Garrett (Chicago: ABA Publishing, 2004), 399.
4. Nigerian journalist Sam Omatseye argues that choosing Africa to dump waste "re-echoes what Europe has always thought of Africa: a wasteland and the people who live there, waste beings." Quoted in James Brookes, "Waste Dumpers Turning to West Africa," New York Times (July 17, 1988): 1.
5. As Carl Zimring, Susan Strasser, and others have pointed out, people have been reusing and selling waste for far longer, but this paper concentrates on the latest trend of international waste trading and dumping. See Carl Zimring, "Dirty Work: How Hygiene and Xenophobia Marginalized the American Waste Trades, 1870-1930," Environmental History 9 (January 2004): 80-101. (Pubitemid 38329734)
6. Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 8.
7. Michael Thompson, Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 12.
8. Robert Walker, "Prices of Steel Scrap Soar, but Not Far Enough to Make Derelict Cars Vanish," New York Times (February 22, 1970): F12.
9. "Car Disposal Fee Sought," New York Times (June 21, 1970): 61;
10. Agis Salpukas, "Abandoned Cars: A Headache for the Cities," New York Times (October 12, 1970): 29;
11. Robert Lindsey, "Shredders Slowly Reducing Heaps of Junked Cars," New York Times (March 26, 1972): 60;
12. George Vecsey, "Junked Cars Pile Up In Hills of Appalachia," New York Times (April 2, 1972): IA24.
13. Carl Zimring, Cash for Your Trash: Scrap Recycling in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 61-9.
14. Zimring, Cash for Your Trash, 103.
15. Madison, Wisconsin, in 1968 was the first city to start a curbside recycling program for newspapers. See Martin Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 221.
16. Martin Melosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment (2005), 221. Ibid.
17. National Environmental Research Center, PB-223-034, "Economic and Technological Impediments to Recycling Obsolete Ferrous Solid Waste." Distributed by National Technical Information Service, U.S. Department of Commerce, October 1973.
18. Arsen Darnay and William E. Franklin, "Salvage Markets: For Materials in Solid Wastes." Economic Study (SW-29c), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1972.
19. Arsen Darnay and William E. Franklin, "Salvage Markets: For Materials in Solid Wastes." Economic Study , 1972. Ibid.
20. Arsen Darnay and William E. Franklin, "Salvage Markets: For Materials in Solid Wastes." Economic Study , 1972. Ibid.
21. Sylvia Porter, "Recycling Paper Would Conserve Energy Resources," Tri City Herald (January 30, 1974), http://news.google.com/ newspapers?id=X9cwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=w-EFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5687,5701913&dq= waste+paper+recycling&hl=en.
22. "Draft Study by the Council of Economic Advisers: Ferrous Scrap Supply Adequacy in 1974," RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974.
23. Box 316, "Memo for the Secretary from A/S for DIB," RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974 from A/S for DIB.
24. D. E. Seidel Osborne, Kansas Letter to Honorable Keith Sebelius House of Representatives, January 24, 1974, Box 317, Folder: Scrap, Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974, RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, TNA.
25. "Draft Study by the Council of Economic Advisers: Ferrous Scrap Supply Adequacy in 1974," Box 316 "Memo for the Secretary from A/S for DIB," Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974, RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, TNA.
26. Tadao Kawaguchi and Kenji Sugiyama, Steel Industry I: Manufacturing System (New York: Gordon and Breech, Science Publishers, 1989), 77.
27. Fred L. Smith Jr., "Trends in Wastepaper Exports and Their Effects on Domestic Markets," Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, Resource Recovery Division, 1974, EPA Report # EPA/530/SW-132, 1-2. The report also briefly describes historic export patterns: "Absolute levels of U.S. wastepaper consumption have increased gradually since 1950. In terms of total tonnage, domestic consumption has consistently increased, slowly though the sixties and then more rapidly in the seventies. During the same period, wastepaper exports increased slowly but erratically, with relatively large jumps occurring in 1970 and then again in 1973. As a percentage of total U.S. wastepaper recovery, exports remained relatively constant through the sixties but increased during the sixties but remained relatively constant in the last four years. Over the 24 years from 1950 through 1973, exports have ranged from a low of 1.5 percent to a high of 5.3 percent of total U.S. recovery, with the high occurring in 1973." (2)
28. Fred L. Smith Jr., "Trends in Wastepaper Exports and Their Effects on Domestic Markets," Ibid.
29. "Memo for the Secretary from A/S for DIB (domestic and international business), Mtg. 2/1 with Sen. Fannin and Richard Scudder re: Export Controls on Waste Newspaper," Box 324, Folder: Commodities / Wastepaper (policy), Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974, RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, TNA.
30. John E. Fry, General Manager Pawtucket Times, Pawtucket, RI, Letter to Honorable John O. Pastore (Senator), March 8, 1974, Box 314, Folder: Commodities / Wastepaper (general correspondence), Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974, RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, TNA.
31. David A. Browde, "Hempstead Suspends Recycling of Paper," New York Times (November 24, 1974): 1.
32. David A. Browde, "Hempstead Suspends Recycling of Paper," New York Times (1974): 1. Ibid.
33. Fred L. Smith Jr., "Trends in Wastepaper Exports and Their Effects on Domestic Markets," Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, Resource Recovery Div. 1974, EPA Report # EPA/530/SW-132, 12.
34. "Waste Exchanges: Background Information," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1980 publication SW-887.1, 1-8.
35. Pieter Van Beukering et al., "A Global Assessment of Wastepaper Trade," Chapter 2 in Wastepaper Trade and Recycling in India, ed. Pieter Van Beukering and Vinod K. Sharma (Jodhpur: Scientific Publishers, 1997), 14.
36. William D. Smith, "New Rises are Feared," New York Times (December 12, 1973): 1.
37. Jagdish N. Bhagwati, The New International Economic Order: The North South Debate (Boston: MIT Press, 1977), 6.
38. Michael Doyle, "Stalemate in the North-South Debate: Strategies and the New International Economic Order," World Politics 35 (April 1983): 429.
39. "Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order," http://www.un-documents.net/s6r3201.htm 3201 (S-VI).
40. "Recycling Petrodollars," Newsweek (January 6, 1975): 26.
41. "Report of the United States Delegation to the Senior Economic Advisers to ECE Governments Eleventh Session," February 25-March 2, 1974, Geneva, Switzerland, Office of the Secretary Executive Secretariat's Subject File, 1953-1974, Box 317, Folder: Economic Affairs Policy, 1974, RG40, General Records of the Department of Commerce, TNA.
42. "Recycling Petrodollars," Newsweek (1975): 26. Ibid.
43. "Comments of Sidney L. Jones at the Meeting of Senior Economic Advisers to ECE United Nations Economic and Social Council," February 25-March 2, 1974, Geneva, Switzerland, Box 317, Folder: Economic Affairs Policy, Records of the Department of Commerce, TNA.
44. James P. Lester, "New Federalism and Environmental Policy," Publius 16 (Winter 1986): 149-165.
45. Andrew Szasz, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
46. The 1968 Survey of Community Solid Waste Practices was the first national attempt to quantify the amount of municipal waste accruing, and only half of the six thousand communities surveyed contributed estimates of how much waste they were collecting. See Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 201.
47. "Summary of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act," 42 U.S.C. 6901 et seq. (1976). See http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/rcra.html.
48. Kate O'Neill, Waste Trading Among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 28. Also, O'Neill's chapter "Out of the Backyard: Hazardous Waste Use as an International Issue" includes a very good discussion of the definition of "hazardous" and the accompanying pitfalls of different definitions. The reason for this problem, O'Neill writes, is because "a waste in one context may be in another a useful and valued commodity" (26). This potential flexibility sums up much of the problem and promise of waste trading discussed in this essay: flexibility allows for both ingenuity and abuse. With the regulation of waste came the very politically and economically loaded process of establishing definitions and corporate attempts to bend them.
49. Melosi, 201; and "Solid Waste Disposal Act, as Amended Through P.L. 107-377," December 31, 2002, http://epw.senate.gov/rcra.pdf.
50. David Pellow, Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), 53. This book has a very good description of the evolution of the environmental justice movement in conjunction with toxic waste dumping, as does Andrew Szasz's Ecopopulism.
51. Szasz, Ecopopulism, 151.
52. Pellow, Resisting Global Toxics, 55.
53. Elli Louka, Overcoming National Barriers to International Waste Trade: A New Perspective on the Transnational Movements of Hazardous and Radioactive Wastes, International Environmental Law and Policy Series, v. 22. (Dordrecht: Graham & Trotman/M. Nijhoff, 1994), 112.
54. Pellow, Resisting Global Toxics, 50.
55. David Rotman, with Emma Chynoweth and Faye Flam, "Hazardous Waste: Tightening Rules-and Options-Up The Ante," Chemical Week (August 22, 1990): 34.
56. Rolf P. Hill, "Industrial Waste Exchanges Fact Sheet (SW-688)," 1978. EPA library online, 3. And "The First US Waste Exchange," Business Week (November 10, 1975): 96.
57. "Waste Exchanges Sought," Chemical Week (September 17, 1975): 17.
58. Margo W. Ferguson, Program Manager, Letter to the Editor, "Success at Waste Exchanges," Chemical Week (July 11, 1984): 5.
59. Rolf P. Hill, "Industrial Waste Exchanges Fact Sheet (SW-688)," 1978. EPA library online.
60. "Waste Exchanges: Background Information," Publication SW-887.1 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1980): 1-11.
61. "Waste Exchanges: Background Information," Publication SW-887.1 (1980): 1-11. Ibid.
62. Rolf P. Hill, "Industrial Waste Exchanges Fact Sheet (SW-688)," 1978. EPA library online.
63. Leyla Boulton, "Chicago Set to Trade Trash in Cyberspace: Fledgling Recyclable Commodities Exchange Hopes to Get a Boost on the Internet," The Financial Times (April 11, 1996): 54.
64. "Waste Exchanges: Background Information," Publication SW-887.1 (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1980): 1-11.
65. Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (New York: New Press, 2005), 155.
66. Steven Greenwood, "Accepting Out-of-State Waste: Truth and Consequence," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Solid Waste, First United States Conference on Municipal Solid Waste Management: Solution for the 90s, Proceedings, Volume I (Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1990), 2-3.
67. Steven Greenwood, "Accepting Out-of-State Waste: Truth and Consequence," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Solid Waste, First United States Conference on Municipal Solid Waste Management: Solution for the 90s, Proceedings, Volume I (1990), 2-3. Ibid.
68. Office of Water and Waste Management, "EPA Activities Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Fiscal Year 1978," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
69. Duff Wilson's book on the packaging of toxic waste from other states as "fertilizer" in Washington offers an alarming example of this trend. Duff Wilson, Fateful Harvest: The True Story of a Small Town, a Global Industry, and a Toxic Secret (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
70. David Morris, "Waste Imperialism: Garbage Imperialism Must Stop," Los Angeles Times (May 18, 1987).
71. "Broker Aims to Profit from Trading Wastes," Chemical Week (February 27, 1980): 47.
72. K. A. Gourlay, World of Waste: Dilemmas of Industrial Development (London: Zed Books, 1992), 2.
73. K. A. Gourlay, World of Waste: Dilemmas of Industrial Development (1992), 2. Ibid.
74. K. A. Gourlay, World of Waste: Dilemmas of Industrial Development (1992) Ibid, 3.
75. Bill Moyers and Center for Investigative Reporting (U.S.), Global Dumping Ground: The International Traffic in Hazardous Waste (Washington: Seven Locks Press, 1990), 37.
76. James Brookes, "African Nations Barring Foreign Toxic Waste," New York Times (September 25, 1988): 18.
77. See Kate O'Neill's Waste Trading Among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).
78. http://www1.american.edu/TED/nigeria.htm, Nigeria Hazardous Waste Case Study.
79. http://www1.american.edu/TED/benin.htm, Benin Hazardous Waste Case Study.
80. Kate O'Neill's Waste Trading Among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (2000). Ibid.
81. http://www1.american.edu/TED/benin.htm, Benin Hazardous Waste Case Study.
82. Jim Vallette and Heather Spalding, eds., The International Trade in Wastes: A Greenpeace Inventory, 5th ed. (Washington, DC: Greenpeace U.S.A., 1990), 51.
83. As in many of these cases, there are drastically conflicting reports of the amount of waste and the money that is being exchanged. A Christian Science Monitor article claims that the amount is "10 percent of the West Coast's household garbage-7 million tons a year-for $56 million per year." David Clark Scott, "Marshall Isles: Home for US Waste," Christian Science Monitor (May 4, 1989): 4.
84. David Clark Scott, "Marshall Isles: Home for US Waste," Christian Science Monitor (1989): 4. Ibid.
85. Vallette and Spalding, The International Trade in Wastes: A Greenpeace Inventory, 6.
86. Cathleen Fogel, "Break the Toxic Waste Habit," Christian Science Monitor (August 2, 1993): 19.
87. Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 9.
88. Gwyn Prins, "Politics and the Environment," International Affairs 66 (October 1990): 711-730.
89. Jennifer Clapp, "The Toxic Waste Trade with Less-Industrialised Countries: Linkages and Political Alliances," Third World Quarterly 15 (1994): 1.
90. Katharina Kummer, "The International Regulation of Transboundary Traffic in Hazardous Wastes: The 1989 Basel Convention," The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 41 (July 1992): 530-562.
91. Katharina Kummer, "The International Regulation of Transboundary Traffic in Hazardous Wastes: The 1989 Basel Convention," The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 41 (1992) Ibid, 539.
92. Katharina Kummer, "The International Regulation of Transboundary Traffic in Hazardous Wastes: The 1989 Basel Convention," The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 41 (1992) Ibid, 539.
93. Katharina Kummer, "The International Regulation of Transboundary Traffic in Hazardous Wastes: The 1989 Basel Convention," The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 41 (1992) Ibid, 539.
94. Waste was defined at the convention as any substance that was "subject to disposal. In addition, operations which lead to final disposal of wastes, such as landfill, incineration or release into a water body, the definition also includes recycling operations." See Kummer, "International Regulation," 543.
95. United States, Basel Convention on the Export of Waste: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, on H.R. 2358, H.R. 2398, and H.R. 2580, Bills to Amend the Solid Waste Disposal Act⋯October 10, 1991. Washington: U.S. G.P.O, 1992, 191.
96. Basel Convention on the Export of Waste: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, 1992, 191. Ibid.
97. Wilfred J. Ethier, "Dumping," The Journal of Political Economy 90 (June 1982): 487-506.
98. Wilson B. Brown and Jan S. Hogendorn, International Economics: In the Age of Globalization (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 306.
99. Mother Jones (November/December 1979).
100. An address by William Morris delivered at University College, Oxford, reprinted by him in the magazine Today, February 1884 under the Title "Art Under Plutocracy." Reprinted in 1962 in Art, Labour and Socialism: With a Modern Assessment. By the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
101. Mary Douglas's definition of dirt in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966) as "Matter out of Place" has been employed by many scholars examining cultural conceptions of waste, dirt, and sanitation.
102. There are many good books depicting the politics of the international waste trade such as Kofi Asante-Duah and Imre V. Nagy, International Trade in Hazardous Waste (New York: Routledge, 1998);
103. Jennifer Clapp, Toxic Exports: The Transfer of Hazardous Wastes from Rich to Poor Countries (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001);
104. David Naguib Pellow, Resisting Global Toxics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).
105. Jim Wilcox, as quoted in Matt Richtel and Kate Galbraith, "Back to Junk Value, Recyclables are Piling Up," New York Times (December 8, 2008).
106. Jim Wilcox, Matt Richtel and Kate Galbraith, "Back to Junk Value, Recyclables are Piling Up," New York Times (2008). Ibid.
107. Dan Levin, "China's Big Recycling Market Is Sagging," New York Times (March 12, 2009), B1.
108. There is also the issue of how knowledge of risk evolves in comparison to the risky behavior itself. Hamblin in his new book, Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, remarks that, through the middle of this century, the United States and Britain both used the ocean as their dumping ground. In fact, the sea "seemed to be the answer to the waste disposal problem." During the ColdWar, leading oceanographers saw little problem with the ocean doubling as a sewer, "using language that might have led to the professional ostracism of an aspiring marine scientist just a few decades later." Joel Tarr also notes in his article "Industrial Waste Disposal in the United States as a Historical Problem," [Ambix: The Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 49 (March 2002): 4-20] that it is hard as historians sometimes to figure out whether or not industries in different periods were cognizant or not of the risk involved in disposing of the pollutants they produced. Daniel Valero and Jeffrey Pierce in their book Engineering the Risks of Hazardous Wastes (Butterworth-Heineman, 2003) describe in broader terms the evolution of risk factors in the United States and how there has generally been since World War II a trend of decreasing risk in Americans' daily lives.
109. Jennifer Clapp, Toxic Exports, 12.