In
Northern Ireland today more waste is produced than
ever before and there is less recycling than in
any other European country. The European average
for recycled rubbish is about 30 percent of the
total waste output – in Northern Ireland it
is just 5 percent. In 2000, each Northern Ireland
home produced an average of 1.39 tonnes of waste.
Just under 960 000 tonnes of municipal waste is
generated each year in the six counties (1998/1999
figures), of which 867 500 tonnes is household waste
and under 92 500 tonnes is commercial and industrial
waste collected by the District Councils. This compares
to census figures for 1988 of 704 400 tonnes. This
increase represents and average annual growth rate
of 1.91 percent. (1)
The
average Northern household throws out more than
a tonne of waste every year. If all the rubbish
discarded annually was collected, it could cover
the whole of Northern Ireland. Every fortnight,
people throw away enough to fill the Waterfront
Hall in Belfast. One tonne of plastics is equivalent
to 20,000 two litre drinks bottles or 120,000 carrier
bags. There are over 12,000 tonnes of plastic bottles
in NI waste stream annually. In Northern Ireland
the average person uses around 95 plastic bottles
every year. This is over 250 million bottles. When
squashed these bottles will fill about 200 Ulster
buses. Every year, 230 million carrier bags are
used here. Most of them end up in landfill sites.
Around 200,000 used nappies are thrown in the bin
in Northern Ireland every day. Around £1m
worth of aluminium cans is disposed of. Every year
in Northern Ireland we dispose of enough aluminium
cans, which if placed end to end would cover the
coast of Ireland seven times. The average person
in Northern Ireland uses about 140 glass bottles
per year, with nearly half for soft drinks and beer.
Five out of six glass bottles used every year are
thrown straight into the dustbin.
52,000
tonnes of glass are landfilled each year in Northern
Ireland. This waste stream could be cut by a third
if each person in Northern Ireland recycled just
20 bottles. More than three trees have to be felled
every year to provide the quantity of paper that
is used by the average Northern Ireland household.
In NI about 12,000 tonnes of textiles (clothing,
sheets, towels, tablecloths, curtains, rugs, carpets,
furniture covers and stuffing, rope, twine, canvas,
sacking, rags and dusters, bags and toys) are discarded
every year. If all textiles that are thrown away
in one year were compressed together, you could
build a solid tower, the same width and three times
the height of Canary Wharf Tower, the largest building
in Britain. (2)
The
main reason why waste is an issue is because it
is causing damage to the environment. Most waste
has been buried in “landfill sites” (holes
in the ground in places like disused quarries).
Waste is tipped there and then buried in soil. The
problem is that Northern Ireland is running out
of landfill. As the waste is rotting, a polluting
liquid called leachate goes into the waters and
methane gas goes into the atmosphere, causing damage
to the environment. This is an expression of the
fundamental “metabolic rift” between individuals
and their environment resulting from accumulation
without limits.
If
the more important question of the environmental
sustainability of capitalism has been well documented,
it is worth examining what the official response
to the waste issue has been. The imperative to reduce,
recycle and reuse (the “Three Rs” policy
promoted by government agencies) does not escape
and has been shaped by the logic of the commodity
form. A whole profitable industry has grown around
recycling and waste management. Waste has a use
value. For example, once recycled, plastic bottles
are made into a range of new products, including
garden furniture, fleece clothing, carpets, bedding
products and new bottles. It takes about 25 two
litre recycled plastic bottles to make one fleece
jacket. Fermanangh company Quinglass for example
uses a third of the 750 million glass containers
it supplies per year from recycling schemes to provide
new bottles for well known brand names such as Ballygowan,
River Rock, Sprite and Coke.
This
is not even mentioning illegal waste dumping. In
the Republic, a waste contractor is paid about £2,500
to remove a 20 tonnes load of waste to the North.
The person who allows illegal dumping on his or
her land will pocket £70 to £100. The
lorry driver pockets about £150 to £200
a trip. So after costs, the dodgy dumpster is left
with a hefty £2,200 profit - that is just
one lorry in one drop. So it is easy to see how
that can add up. Four lorry loads a day will make
someone £8,800 profit - that is half a million
pounds in 12 weeks. (4)
The
commodification of waste can be used to interpret
collective fantasies that circulate in today’s
capitalist economy. The ideology of recycling is
the alchemist’s ultimate dream: turn waste
back into gold. Converting waste into value is indeed
alchemical thinking, to the fetishism of commodities
one can add the fetishism of waste. In his Rubbish
Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value
(Oxford University Press, 1979). Michael Thompson
developed a fascinating theory of the cycles through
which a thing had value, lost value, and regained
value. Waste is not simply part of the “accursed
share” of society, it is material to be redeemed.
There is a utopian fantasy of redemption there,
not unlike the idea of the resurrection of the body.
We can track the fate of a commodity from being
a useful item, an item that can be exchanged for
another item, looses its use value and can be thrown
out as waste, and that waste regaining a “second
hand value”. Waste is not wasted.
