Garbage In, Garbage Out: Solving the Problems with Long-Distance Trash Transport

CHAPTER 2 Waste Not, Want Not: Are Americans the World’s Premier Waste Makers?

CHAPTER 2 Waste Not, Want Not Are Americans the World’s Premier Waste Makers? ‘‘Trash’’ is a relative concept.∞ The meaning of the term varies depending on the time and on the circumstances. Historian Susan Strasser demonstrates that through the late nineteenth century Americans evinced a strong attachment to the ideas of thrift and reuse. All classes embraced these notions, which were exemplified in New York City’s commitment to source reduction.≤ But in the early twentieth century, Americans became more inclined to discard goods rather than mend or recycle them. In e√ect, we came to perceive used items and food waste as unwanted, and, in so doing, we redefined our ideas about what constituted trash. This inclination was reinforced when advertisers in the 1920s began to present throwaway products as convenient and sanitary. As Strasser puts it, ‘‘The ideal of the durable and reusable was displaced by aspirations of leisure and luxury, ease, and cleanliness.’’≥ Strasser’s work points to the close links between waste disposal and consumption. Her work complements that of Vance Packard, who more than forty years ago condemned practices like planned obsolescence, Waste Not, Want Not 33 constant changes in fashion, and advertising that encouraged consumption for its own sake. Packard was concerned that artificially induced consumption would turn us all into ‘‘waste makers.’’ Whether or not we agree with Packard’s obvious distress over what he called a ‘‘force-fed society with a vested interest in prodigality,’’ we should heed his admonition to consider patterns of consumption and their connection with waste production.∂ In this chapter I consider first the theoretical and empirical relationship between consumption and pollution. In so doing, I focus on the debate among environmental economists over whether increased economic activity, as measured by consumption levels and GDP, is associated with predictable changes in environmental degradation. Then I examine empirically the question of whether Americans make more trash than their European Union and Japanese counterparts. Finally, I describe the ways in which the EU, its Member States, and Japan constrain trash management through integrated, multifaceted regulatory strategies. Does Prosperity Make Us Better Environmentalists? Logic suggests that the more we consume, the more pollution we make. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that higher energy expenditure is associated with more waste. One way to advertise one’s aΔuence to friends and neighbors is to discard lots of objects. In fact, there is little dispute that at low levels of economic development, consumption, economic growth, and pollution are positively related. However, there is controversy over whether economic growth eventually helps environmental quality or whether aΔuence is the environment’s worst enemy. There are many voices on both sides of this argument.∑ E. F. Schumacher’s rallying cry in Small Is Beautiful is that economic growth, long the central goal of economists because it is seen as the antidote to poverty, is inevitably detrimental to the environment. Arguing along parallel lines, the economist Herman Daly asserts that economic growth as traditionally construed cannot be sustained because natural resources are finite. Similarly, Ehrlich and Ehrlich claim that unchecked population growth and unfettered consumption in the developed nations will cause environmental disaster. To these influential ob- 34 Garbage In, Garbage Out servers, economic growth in developing and developed countries alike inevitably poisons the environment because rich people consume more per capita than do people of lesser means. Phrased another way, these observers believe that with aΔuence inevitably comes an ‘‘eΔuent’’ society.∏ However, many economists believe that as we become more prosperous , pollution per capita or per unit of GDP increases at first, but then decreases at higher income levels. When graphed, this relationship between per capita GDP and per capita pollution looks like an ‘‘inverted U,’’ or a bell. Adherents of the inverted-U hypothesis assert that at low to intermediate levels of aΔuence, pollution rises with consumption, but that at higher levels of aΔuence, pollution decreases per unit of economic productivity.π The theory underlying this somewhat counterintuitive prediction works as follows: as their incomes rise, people are more willing to pay for products that are made in environmentally protective ways, and are also more likely to demand government intervention to reduce pollution levels and to protect natural resources. In addition, pollution-abatement techniques are likely to become less expensive in more-aΔuent economies because of investments in research and development and...