Solid waste management practices and their meanings in ecologically conscious households

Abstract

This paper describes the household waste management practices of self-described sustainable households, focusing on the intentional actions the members of these households take to reduce environmental harm. Data from qualitative interviews about household waste management practices related to the disposal of trash, “packaging”, and recycling are analyzed using a Marxist-feminist model of household production. For the households in this study, packaging is a powerful reminder of their collusion with capital, eliciting powerful and unexpected negative reactions in interviews. At the same time, practices that involve allowing organic matter to decompose in the backyard, leaving urine unflushed, or placing human feces in the clothes washing machine or bathtub elicited few negative reactions, and recycling made people feel happy. Packaging and waste are necessary in capitalism because of the spatial division of labor and production, part of the constitutive contradiction between social needs and private production. I show how a division of labor and production that is necessary for accumulation manifests itself in an inherent antagonism toward human well-being in a discussion of the exhaustion, frustration, and conflict generated for highly ecologically oriented parents who are just trying to do their best to live a sustainable life in capitalist society despite the limits to the efficacy of these efforts.

Overaccumulation, crisis, and the contradictions of household waste sorting

“…14 Corporate and non-profit informational campaigns have attempted to educate household members on proper recycling sorting, but as discussed earlier, these efforts have been largely ineffective thus far. American households see recycling anything and everything they can as an important pro-environmental activity they associate with positive feelings and ‘do-your-part’ messages from their childhoods (Munro 2020).…”

“…These recycling procedures place a high burden of occupational knowledge and unwaged waste sorting work on households carrying out this work – Recycling Partnership (2017) lists complex, laborious, and difficult-to-understand recycling rules as a major barrier to recycling. Qualitative interviews described by Munro (2020) reveal that household solid waste sorting provokes surprising emotional intensity, conflict between couples, and stress from the time involved in washing recycling, when sorting rules are not clear, and when materials build up in a busy household. One informant, a single mother of two who works part-time as an environmental educator, described needing to sometimes throw recycling away for her own ‘sanity’ rather than properly clean out a dirty recyclable container (Munro 2020: 10).…”

“…Qualitative interviews described by Munro (2020) reveal that household solid waste sorting provokes surprising emotional intensity, conflict between couples, and stress from the time involved in washing recycling, when sorting rules are not clear, and when materials build up in a busy household. One informant, a single mother of two who works part-time as an environmental educator, described needing to sometimes throw recycling away for her own ‘sanity’ rather than properly clean out a dirty recyclable container (Munro 2020: 10). She reports needing to tell herself, ‘OK in this moment, I need to just not care’ even though throwing away the recycling makes her feel as if she is not doing her part.…”

“…She reports needing to tell herself, ‘OK in this moment, I need to just not care’ even though throwing away the recycling makes her feel as if she is not doing her part. Another informant also describes needing to ‘prioritize sanity’ over time-intensive recycling (Munro 2020: 13). Similarly, a willing recycling participant in Wellesley, MA, describes this sorting work bluntly: ‘[I]t’s a pain, it’s a pain’ (Margolis 2018).…”

“…First, the gendered division of labor with respect to household recycling sorting is not clear. No obvious relationship between gender and household roles with respect to waste sorting or recycling were found by Munro (2020), though the chore of removing waste from the home (‘taking out the trash’) has traditionally been socially assigned to men in heterosexual households with two adults present (Berk 1985), and is also frequently assigned to teenagers (Gager et al 1999). One study finds that recyclers are more likely to be male (National Consumer Council 1997).…”