Special Issue "Waste, Garbage and Filth: Social and Cultural Perspectives on Recycling"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Lionel Obadia
Center for Researches and Studies in Anthropology (CREA), Department of Anthropology, University of Lyon 2, Campus Porte des Alpes, 5 avenue Pierre Mendès-France, F-69676 Bron (Cedex), France
E-Mail:
Interests: religion and nature; cultural and traditional forms of development and sustainability; non-western forms of development; the globalization of standards of development and ecology; critical perspectives on sustainability; beliefs and ideologies of “environment” and their applications; cultural habits towards material culture; recycling and politics of pollution reduction

Dear Colleagues,

This issue is expressly devoted to social and cultural issues on recycling. Since the early 1960s, “Sustainable development” emerged as a critical issue in most contemporary societies and in the 1990s, global warming turned into global warning when the “greenhouse effect” turned out to be the cause of the rapid and worldwide ecological changes. In the 19th century, industrial societies were confident in the idea of Progress and the correlated massive productivity. One century later, waste management has become one of the major economic, social and scientific issues worldwide. Social sciences have nevertheless only recently embarked on the wagon of “recycling” studies. But they can unearth highly relevant information regarding the nature (properties) of “Waste”, the culturally-embedded meanings associated to it (such as Mary Douglas’ “pure”-“impure” dichotomy), and the observable social uses surrounding “Garbage”. An anthropological focus on such issues might either concern qualitative and ethnographic localized perspectives (on the individuals’ level), or a more quantitative, comparative and transcultural standpoint. In any case, as Mikael Drackner has cleverly maintained, emphasis is put on a twofold question “What is waste? To whom?” (Drackner, 2005), to which one can add three others “Where? When? And Why?”. And further, how do societies cope with what they call “rubbish”.

Prof. Dr. Lionel Obadia
Guest Editor

• waste
• recycling
• cultural meanings
• collective representations
• social behaviors

Title: Convenience and Household Recycling of Compact Fluorescent Lights
Author: Travis P. Wagner, Ph.D.
Affiliation: University of Southern Maine, USA
Abstract: Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are an increasingly popular household lighting choice that provides direct economic and environmental benefits. However, because CFLs contain mercury and current data indicates that the household recycling rate is quite low, CFLs present a current and future environmental problem. A previous study examined the US state of Maine’s household recycling practices and found the lack of convenience in the current system of offsite drop-off locations to be a major factor in low recycling participation. In 2009, Maine was the first US state to legislate extended producer responsibility for household-generated CFLs, which requires manufacturers to establish free “convenient collection locations” statewide for household CFLs. While the recycling literature provides little insight into convenience with regards to the drop-off of low value recyclables, in this study, convenience is based on (1) distance to a CFL drop-off location and (2) potential appeal of the location. GIS was used to calculate the percent population coverage within 2, 5, and 8 km for potential location scenarios for each municipality. The results suggest that (1) fire stations and municipal offices have the greatest population percentage coverage within 2 and 5 km; (2) to maximize convenience, each municipality should have multiple drop-off locations, and (3) drop-off locations should be located at consumer (home improvement) and municipal service destinations (municipal offices) to reduce the perceived need for special trips.

Title: Features and Challenges of recycling systems for Establishing a Sound Material- Cycle Society in East Asian countries
-Case study of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment recycling system in Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan -
Author: Soocheol Lee
Affiliation: Faculty of economics, Meijo University
Abstract: This paper firstly aims to make comparative analysis on the feature of the recycling systems of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipments(WEEE) in Japan, China, South Korea, and Taiwan, which are one of the typical outgrowth of the abundant societies of today. Secondly to meet challenges of the systems for establishing a sound material-cycle society in this region.
The increasing amount of WEEE(also the parts) trades in the East Asia region including Hong Kong is bearing watching. This threatens not only environment but also sound recycling system in this region. Making the merits and demerits of each system clear, this paper suggest the vision and the way of the policy cooperation to establish the sound circulation society in this region.

Title: Domestic Separation and Collection of Municipal Solid Waste: Opinion and Awareness of Citizens and Workers
Authors: Giovanni De Feo and Sabino De Gisi
Affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno / via Ponte don Melillo, 1 – 84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy; E-Mail: g.defeo@unisa.it (G.D.F.)
Abstract: The state of the art on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) management is based on a domestic separation of discard materials produced. After the domestic separation, the citizen has to transfer the separated materials to the MSW manager through the hands of collection workers. It is exactly at this stage that an end-use product changes its status and property becoming a waste. This paper analyzes and compare opinion and awareness of citizens and kerbside collection workers about this subject by means of two structured questionnaires in the city of Mercato San Severino (about 22,000 people), in Southern Italy.
Keywords: awareness; citizen; MSW; opinion; questionnaire; separate collection; worker

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Cairo's Contested Garbage. Sustainable Solid Waste Management and the Zabaleen's Right to the City
Author: Keith Sutton
Affiliation: University of Manchester, UK; E-Mail: keith.sutton@manchester.ac.uk
Abstract: Over the decades the Zabaleen, the traditional garbage collectors of Cairo, have created what is arguably one of the world's most efficient and sustainable resource-recovery and waste-recycling systems. However, the continuation of this intricate relationship between the community, environment and livelihood is jeapordized by the official privatization of solid waste services through contracts with technology-intensive multinational corporations which threaten the sustainabliity of the garbage collectors communities by removing access to their chief economic asset, waste or garbage. The situation is exacerbated by an official policy of moving the Zabaleen and their waste sorting, recovery, trading and recycling activities further out of the city, on the grounds that this will turn their neighbourhoods into cleaner and healthier living environments. The consumption of Cairo's sites of garbage collection and sorting open up new socio-political spaces for contestation between multi-national companies and the Zabaleen's traditional system. This is further indicated in the way Cairo's waste materials have been subjected to new claims and contestation, as they are seen as a 'commodity' by global capital entrepreneurs and multi-national corporations, and as a source of 'livelihood' by the disadvantaged and marginalised Zabaleen population.
Key words: Cairo - GarbageCity - Zabaleen garbage collectors - solid waste management

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Uncertainty Regarding Waste Handling in Everyday Life
Authors: Greger Henriksson, Susanne Ewert and Lynn Åkesson
Affiliation: Division of Environmental Strategies / Centre for Sustainable Communications KTH, Drottn. Kristinas v. 30, SE- 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden; E-mails: greger.henriksson@abe.kth.se (G.H.); Lynn.Akesson@kultur.lu.se (L.A.)
Abstract: According to a study based on interviews with households in Sweden, uncertainty is a cultural barrier to improved recycling. Four identified causes of uncertainty are: Bureaucratic categories not matching cultural ones – people easily discriminate between certain categories (e.g. material like plastic and paper) but not between others (e.g. packages and “non-packages”). Thus a frequent cause of uncertainty is that the basic categories of the waste system are not in line with basic categories as constructed in everyday life. Challenged habits – source separation in everyday life is habitual. When a habit is challenged, by a particular element or feature of the waste system, uncertainty can arise. Lacking fractions – some kinds of items are not possible to leave for recycling and this makes waste collection incomplete from the user’s point of view. This in turn makes the credibility of the system lower; ‘if this is important, why not that?’. Missing rules of thumb - the above causes seem particularly to be relevant if no motivating principle or rule of thumb is (within the context of use) successfully conveyed to the user. In the paper it is discussed how reduced uncertainty can improve recycling.

Type of Paper: Article
Title: A Municipal Solid Waste Management Solution – An Integrated Cement Production Process with Waste Incineration System
Authors: Edward L.K. Mui and Gordon McKay
Affiliation: Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong; E-Mail: kemckayg@ust.hk (G.M.K.)
Abstract: This paper describes the design of an integrated cement production process incorporating municipal solid waste (MSW) combustion and a recycling system. Combined with heat energy recovery and reuse of MSW ash, this process is expected to offer substantial potential saving of costs. In a pilot scale study at the processing capacity of 2 tonnes of MSW per hour, emission of gaseous pollutants such as dioxin, SO_x, NO₂, HCl and major heavy metals were well-controlled to levels below the Best Practicable Means limit values of Hong Kong.
Keywords: solid waste; cement production; waste reduction; energy; ash; process economics; incineration