Tell me where you’re from and I’ll tell you what waste you generate
With a wink to this hackneyed phrase used in a hundred situations, today we take a second look at the nature of waste and we do so from its source. We might say that the origin of waste can be found, by default, in mankind. Human beings are both the mother and father of their own waste, which is why it could be said that their waste bears their own resemblance.
Every community, according its laws and customs, and its cultural and social habits, generates a particular type of waste. The waste generated by a small region in Lapland is by no means the same as a family in Sri Lanka, the Cook Islands, New York, or Rio de Janeiro. Waste, in turn, defines this community and the degree of development or industrialisation it has undergone.
Similarly, we find that each region, country or continent perceives waste differently. For some, rubbish is a problem, while others see it as a resource, and still others perhaps do not view it in either term, simply because waste still has not become a cause for concern or generated any interest at all.
Our perception of waste is also different according to what we read in the media and the place where we do it. We can find several examples of this; if we look for news, on Google for example, using the concept or term ‘garbage’ in reference to the United States, the first entries that come up mention news articles referring to ‘space junk’ or ‘nuclear waste’. Evidently, the trash generated by the average American is neither related to space nor nuclear energy, but it demonstrates that ordinary municipal waste -the waste generated by communities living in the country- is well managed, given that, at first glance, the problem of municipal waste does not figure in the top-ten list of most searched, read or published news items.
On the other hand, the same search applied to Spain brings to light a vast number of news stories focussing on poor waste management: strikes by collection services, rubbish piling up in the cities, the lack of hygiene, etc. We might say that in some way waste is perceived as a storage problem, given that these are the problems being published in the media on the subject.
The press in the United Kingdom, however, sees the issue in another light; the problem is not so much centred on the accumulation or management of waste itself, but rather on the legal framework of governmental policies that make it possible for the energy produced from recycling to be easier to export or supply the country itself, or in the capacity of the waste management plants themselves and the energy production derived from them:.
And if we look for what news stories have been written regarding waste-related issues in Africa? We find that these tend to refer to two key concepts: food and electronics. What has been written about electronic waste is well-known and easily explained: the e-waste from rich countries is recycled by poorer countries, causing a great deal of pollution and endangering the health of their inhabitants. In the case of the food/waste equation, another even more well-known alarm bell sounds: sub-Saharan Africa is starving, while food is being thrown away.
Further examples: Latin America, which is a large generator of waste. It has a large number of overpopulated cities with a high degree of industrialisation, despite the fact that a large part of the population often lives below the poverty line, more in common with a third world nation than that of a developing country. The continent is now suffering from the early symptoms of a country having ‘Westernised’ waste, however, it does not have the legal framework in place, nor the cultural base that contemplates the basic principles of recycling that is akin to European culture. They are not respected because they don’t exist.
Another more extreme example: the rubbish on Everest. Waste has been generated at 8,000 metres ever since those first ascents came about, now a century on, but it wasn’t until the warning bell was sounded – one month ago – and it was regulated by law that the news started reporting on the reiterated and historic accumulation of waste that the region suffers due to climbing expeditions from all over the globe: waste is only a problem when somebody sees it. If no one sees it, it goes unnoticed.
Undoubtedly, we find before us a complex reality, not so much in the way we should understand waste, but more in the fact that each community inhabiting the Earth can be found in a specific phase of this process. What for some is a valued resource, for others is merely a by-product that gets piled up or hidden away. What for some is ‘food’, for others is ‘nuclear’. What does not exist in some places in the world because man has not arrived there yet, in others there is enough create a whole new continent.
If we speak of waste, there are no uniformly applied solutions. All the variables must be analysed and complemented in order to understand what lies behind a particular waste problem, and act accordingly. That must be the answer.
Comments are closed.