Waste Political Settlements in Colombia and Chile: Power,Inequality and Informality in Recycling

There are stark differences between the waste recycling literature from the global North and that from the global South. The literature from the global North tends to focus on empirical analyses of existing municipal recycling services and rarely considers institutional factors. When it does, the theoretical approaches adopted are limited, especially regarding the role of informal institutions. In contrast, recycling literature from the global South does focus on informal institutions, but it does so by concentrating on the struggles of waste pickers rather than on the performance of waste management services provided by local authorities. This divergence in the literature suggests the need for an analytical framework that integrates institutions and recycling performance. This article analyses waste disposal regimes in two Latin American metropolitan areas, Medellín (Colombia) and Santiago (Chile), and explores the link between income inequality and recycling. It focuses on the political settlements that lie at the heart of the waste regimes. As such, waste regimes in these two cities are understood to be a product of the interplay of balances of power, institutions and distribution of benefits. The study also highlights the need to understand informal institutions as relational phenomena that affect both the rich and the poor, and not just as a subsistence strategy by the latter.     

The Waste Commons in an Emerging Resource Recovery Waste Regime: Contesting Property and Value in Melbourne's Hard Rubbish Collections

Practices of scavenging of Melbourne's hard rubbish collections are examined in the context of an emerging resource recovery waste regime linked with policy shifts that promote resource recovery over disposal through landfill. Waste regimes have many parallels with regimes in natural resource management and contestations over property are an important but neglected aspect. Based on research conducted primarily in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I argue that hard rubbish on the kerb‐side forms an informal ‘waste commons’ that facilitates various forms of revaluing of municipal household waste. Results of a survey conducted by householders scavenging of their own hard rubbish piles suggest that informal scavenging activities were more effective for diverting waste from landfill by recycling than the formal processes of council hard rubbish contractors. Interviews conducted with residents, waste management contractors and self identified ‘professional’ scavengers revealed different perspectives on the waste commons and highlighted the contested nature of property in hard rubbish. Together with the survey findings, they allow tentative conclusions to be drawn about the role of the waste commons in the transition from a regime of disposal through landfill to one focused on resource recovery.     

Creating authentic ‘glacial’ landforms from waste materials: Two UK case studies

This paper describes two case studies of hills of waste material in the UK that have been specifically conceived to replicate glacial landforms. In one case a spent oil‐shale tip ('bing') and municipal waste dump in West Lothian has been remodelled and restored in the form of a local glacial crag‐and‐tail. In the other, a municipal waste disposal landraise hill in Lancashire has been designed to resemble the local drumlins. An assessment of the geomorphological authenticity of the landforms is made and it is concluded that the involvement of glacial geomorphologists in such projects is important if convincing and authentic outcomes are to be achieved. Adherence to landscape principles and attention to detail can pay dividends in winning public support, in achieving cost savings, and in securing successful after‐uses.     

OPTIMALITY OF RECYCLING AND THE LOCATION OF A RECYCLING CENTER

ABSTRACT. Consider a community investigating the integration of recycling into its waste management program. Even if (1) the county's citizens do not gain utility from recycling, (2) landfill space is plentiful, and (3) the market price for recyclables is zero, recycling can still be optimal for a local government. By determining the relationship between the amount of recycling and the location of a recycling center, conditions are identified under which recycling will reduce total waste management costs enough that municipal recycling will be optimal. In addition, it is shown that the likelihood of municipal recycling increases with the size of the city.     

Rural income transfer programs and rural household food security in Ethiopia

Based on household food security surveys conducted in Ethiopia, this study seeks to understand the roles and limitations of income transfer projects as determinants of households’ food security. By covering the Food-For-Work Programs (FFWPs) and the Productive Safety Net Programs (PSNPs), the study shows that these programs served as temporary safety nets for food availability, but they were limited in boosting the dietary diversity of households and their coping strategies. Households which participated in the programs increased their supply of food as a temporary buffer to seasonal asset depletion. However, participation in the programs was marred by inclusion error (food-secure households were included) and exclusion error (food-insecure households were excluded). Income transfer projects alone were not robust determinants of household food security. Rather, socio-demographic variables of education and family size as well as agricultural input of land size were found to be significant in accounting for changes in households’ food security. The programs in the research sites were funded through foreign aid, and the findings of the study imply the need to reexamine the approaches adopted by bilateral donors in allocating aid to Ethiopia. At the same time the study underscores the need to improve domestic policy framework in terms of engendering rural local institutional participation in project management.     

固体废物处理与资源化技术的应用研究及发展综述

随着我国城市化进程的不断加快和市场经济的快速发展,固体废物的产生量随之不断增加。需研究和选择科学合理的处置技术.以解决当前城市固体废物污染环境问题。本文对我国固体废物分类管理现状进行分析,综述了固体废物资源化技术的应用。对我国固体废物的处理工艺具有重要意义。     

MAKING CHAINS THAT (UN)MAKE THINGS: WASTE–VALUE RELATIONS AND THE BANGLADESHI RUBBISH ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY

There is growing empirical and theoretical interest in post‐consumption activity that results in the capture and creation of value from waste in the global economy. This article engages with two dominant approaches to tracing the capture and creation of value, global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs), and their shared call to examine waste disposal and recycling. Using non‐participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and a survey we examine what happens to the products of one of GVCs ‘and GPNs’ paradigmatic industries, electronics, when they are labelled e‐waste and are imported into Dhaka, Bangladesh, as rubbish electronics. Rather than wasting and final disposal predominating, our research documents a substantial rubbish recovery economy that captures and creates value anew. Consequently, we argue that both GVC and GPN approaches must rethink how they theorize the capture and creation of value.     

Household pottery disposal in the Maya highlands: An ethnoarchaeological interpretation

Depositional theory concerns the relationship between depositional behavior and material culture. The ethnoarchaeologist has the opportunity to study this relationship in ongoing communities. Some understanding of the content and spatial patterning of discarded material culture, in terms of the predictability of and major behavioral factors contributing to different disposal patterns, is of particular interest to the archaeologist, who must base most sociocultural interpretations on artifact assemblages composed primarily of discarded items. In terms of the Maya household, pottery disposal can be viewed as an evolutionary process, composed of sequentially derived assemblages. These assemblages comprise a use and reuse assemblage (i.e., the basic household inventory), a disposal assemblage, an abandonment assemblage, and finally an archaeological assemblage. Variability in the behavioral factors that affect assemblage change can significantly alter the spatial patterning and condition of the vessels in the pottery inventory of a given household unit. Emphasis is placed on the possible confusion of depositional patterning within household activity areas, and the nature of distinguishable feature-related, disposal patterns within household compounds.     

Restoring the Shine to a Pearl: Recycling Behaviour in Penang,Malaysia

Despite serious waste management problems in Penang Island, a recycling campaign launched in 2001 has met with little success. This may be because the campaign was not backed up with knowledge about factors that motivate recycling. This article develops a simple economic framework to explain individual recycling behaviour. A logit model that utilizes survey data drawn from a sample of 760 respondents was used to test the insights gained from the framework. As predicted by the framework, recycling was negatively related to factors that increased the private costs of recycling, such as the lack of storage space and low income. Recycling increased among respondents who recognized its benefits: they include the environmentally conscious, those who were aware of the recycling campaign and respondents in the twenty‐five to thirty‐five year age category. Interestingly, neither gender nor distance to recycling centres were reliable predictors of recycling behaviour.     

‘Lifescaping’ toxicants: Locating and living with e-waste in Tanzania

Based on fieldwork in an informal scrap recycling workshop, this article explores how unregulated electronic waste (e-waste) handling activities in Dar es Salaam expose workers to toxic substances as part of their livelihoods. These informal economic activities are situated in the urban landscape within the surrounding global flows of e-waste and recycling and demonstrate how workers reflect on and seek to mitigate the toxic exposures they encounter as part of daily life. The concept ‘lifescaping’ is used to show how, while informal workers may be aware of toxic exposures and make the best of tricky situations in various ways, they have limited access to information about the dangers and must develop their own strategies by performing various micro-actions through which they hope to protect themselves.     

日本的循环社会建设

上世纪90年代以来,日本政府在环境基本法和环境基本计划的框架下推进了循环社会建设,新世纪以来通过实施《循环社会基本法》和《循环社会基本计划》,继续推进了循环社会建设。同时,环境立国战略也对循环社会建设提出了新的要求。第二次《循环社会基本计划》强调了建设循环社会的紧迫性和新课题,提出了2015年前的任务、目标、政策方向和政策措施。日本循环社会建设取得了初步成效,积累了有益的经验,可供我国学习、参考和借鉴。     

Destination unknown: Rokkasho and the international future of nuclear reprocessing

The much discussed expansion of investment in nuclear power in response to global warming and energy scarcity depends on solutions being found to the management and disposal of spent reactor fuels. The reprocessing route, involving the separation from radioactive waste of plutonium and uranium and their subsequent recycling, has long been advocated. However, experience shows that it suffers from chronic problems of coordination, usually resulting in mismatches of supply and demand and large stockpiles of plutonium. Just as the UK is withdrawing, Japan is embarking on large-scale reprocessing with the opening of the facility at Rokkasho which seems destined to produce large surpluses of plutonium against a background of heightened concerns over nuclear proliferation. In the meantime, the Bush administration has ended the United States'blanket opposition to reprocessing and is proposing a controversial new discrimination between'fuel-cycle'and'non-fuel-cycle'states. Confusion reigns.     

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “Southern” geographies of informal recyclers provide resources for interpreting this phenomenon but studies of a commodity frontier in urban waste have tended to focus on moments when informal waste workers are displaced by capital intensive waste management systems. I draw on concepts in world-ecology and materialist ecofeminism to explore the proliferation of informal waste workers in Barcelona and the way their (re)production produces “Metabolic Value”. Informal waste work is shown to emerge and persist as part of a commodity frontier process—where the appropriation of unpaid work from non-commodified spaces is the hallmark of how capitalism secures “Cheap Nature”. The study suggests that, rather than internalising ecological costs, recycling often rests on the appropriation of value from uncommodified spaces.     

Takeaway food,waste, and their geographies in workplaces

This article draws on empirical research to develop an understanding of the social and cultural geography of food and its waste in the workplace. Our aim is to contribute to the wider body of literature on everyday geographies of waste and wasting in relation to food, paying attention to the complex trajectories of the disposal of the waste produced by food consumption beyond the scale of the household. On that basis, the work explores the distinct ways in which the waste produced by takeaway food consumption is managed in workplaces and examines how food consumption and wasting manifest in relation to both workplace contexts and wider sociocultural and material factors in urban China. Such matters are still under‐researched there. Specifically, we identify the different conduits through which food and food packaging become waste in workplaces. Food is transformed into waste soon after it becomes surplus, whereas food packaging becomes waste through two conduits: the conventional way of binning and the alternative way of reusing.     

Towards Household Sustainability in Sydney? Impacts of Two Sustainable Lifestyle Workshop Programs on Water Consumption in Existing Homes

Residential water consumption accounts for approximately 70 per cent of Sydney's water consumption. The capacity of households to reduce water consumption is limited by expectations and conventions of water supply shaped by existing water infrastructure ( Allon and Sofoulis, 2006 ) and ‘saver‐unfriendly’ household water fittings ( Sofoulis, 2005 ). Sustainable lifestyle workshop programs – many of which address water use – are relatively new, and rigorous research into their impacts is scarce. Existing research generally relies on reported behaviour change from participants, which is then used to estimate resource savings. This paper examines water consumption data, and the questionnaire responses of participants in two sustainable lifestyle workshop programs, to examine whether reported behavioural and technical changes are translating into significant water savings. The Sustainability Street (Penrith) and GreenHome (Parramatta) programs are changing participant behaviours, but reductions achieved by Sustainability Street are not significant at the 0.05 level. GreenHome reductions, while significant, cannot be fully attributed to the program due to the downward trend commencing prior to the program. The improved behaviour of participants – in comparison to their previous behaviour and the behaviour of non‐participants – is thus not translating into significant water savings. This indicates that the relationship between improved environmental behaviour and actual water savings is not as straightforward as program operators might assume. The implications of this are that research should use real consumption data and not estimations derived from behaviour change, and strategies to reduce household water consumption need to involve bigger technical changes to household water infrastructures.     

Urban impoverishment and multiple modes of livelihood in Ghana

Many African countries experienced economic crisis in the 1970s and are currently restructuring their economies under the tutelage of the World Bank and the IMF. The restructuring process has had pervasive effects on the livelihood strategies of many people, as their established means of income generation have been disrupted. While survival of the urban poor has been studied, little is known of strategies of other social groups. Using Ghana as a case study, I argue that although urban poverty predates the implementation of structural adjustment program (SAP), the policies have created a favorable environment for the intensification of multiple livelihood strategies among of salaried employees. The paper finds that multiple livelihood strategies are practiced by a large number of salaried employees, but their involvement depends on many factors, including individual, family and household characteristics; access to capital and resources; opportunities offered by the urban economy; and the nature of formal employment.     

Women's ecological oral histories of recycling and development in coastal Yucatán

This article addresses the formation of the Chen Kole ‘Lob women's recycling cooperative and its relationship to urbanization, plastics consumption, and the exclusionary spaces of conservation-as-development in coastal Yucatán, Mexico. Increasing amounts of plastic containers and other nonorganic garbage contaminate backyards, protected wetlands and marine areas, and individual homes located in low-lying floodable areas. However, in this region, the majority of sponsored economic development programs are directed at managing men's activities in sustainable fishing and ecotourism within natural protected areas. Both women's work and urban issues such as recycling and waste management have frequently been excluded from state policies and development practice. I draw from oral histories of women's experience in the home, in conservation space, and as participants in grassroots plastics recycling to underscore what motivated women to become involved in recycling and garbage cleanup, and how women came to be considered local professionals who maintain clean spaces. These histories underscore the links between gendered work, urban practices, and conservation-as-development, and how women's urban recycling work affects social differences and ecological decline within vulnerable coastal areas.     

Hazardous Waste Site Cleanup and Neighborhood Redevelopment: An Opportunity to Address Multiple Socially Desirable Goals

The United States' hazardous waste site remediation programs are being challenged for lacking cost-effectiveness. We argue that these expensive programs will be more cost-effective and viable politically if economic and social analyses are included explicitly in risk analyses. Using data from surveys of people living within one-half-mile of seven hazardous waste sites, we show that some neighborhoods offer the opportunity for joint site remediation and neighborhood redevelopment programs. Mechanisms are suggested that would permit the United States Environmental Protection Agency to implement neighborhood environmental and redevelopment programs.     

Cities and Privatization

Cities across America look for management strategies useful for accomplishing their responsibilities and programs. While some cities include privatization strategies in their management portfolios, others do not, and the underlying reasons are not readily apparent. This study seeks to gain some insight into this disparity through several questions: Why do some cities use more privatization than others? Are privatization levels higher in fiscally healthy or fiscally stressed cities? Where are the cities that use privatization located? This study attributes municipal privatization levels in medium-sized cities, in part, to degree of wealth, fiscal stress, and location. The findings suggest that privatization levels are higher in wealthy, fiscally healthy, suburban cities.     

Translocal Householding: Care and Migrant Livelihoods in a Waste‐trading Community of Vietnam's Red River Delta

This article examines the shifting household organization of care and livelihoods in a community of Vietnam's Red River Delta that has a history of migrating to work in the urban waste trade, and has been doing so increasingly since the socialist country embraced a market economy in the mid‐1980s. In Spring District, household care and livelihood activities have been taking place across the city and the countryside for decades, indicating the degree to which the rural household reflexively opens up its spatial and social boundaries in response to broader processes of change. Their trajectories reveal fluidity in terms not only of spatial mobility but also of the gendered configuration of paid work and care, and complex dynamics between household care practices and the development of waste trading as a particular migrant livelihood activity. The analysis draws on and advances the concept of ‘householding’ emerging from recent discussion of the globalization of social reproduction.