The Persistence of Garbage

Giant Gingko/Flickr

This is what I find to be a beautiful short film that gives some perspective and pause for thought on a phenomenon we are already fully aware of: many of the materials we use to produce goods last long beyond the useful lives of those goods:



Whether made of plastic or another substance, if our trash cannot decompose or otherwise degrade it stands to adversely impact not only the natural ecology, but also the quality of our lives. In the absence of a natural pathway for breaking down our trash into a more innocuous form or state, the possibility remains that we could accomplish it through the use of artificial or industrial means: recycling or engineering closed input-output loops into the production process.

But as we are aware of from our daily lives, even if we do not always think about it, the lugubrious reality is that the means for fully processing our waste do not exist and much of it slips through the cracks of our waste management system. It then escapes into and contaminates the environment, both human and natural.

This process is already playing out in the now well-publicized Pacific Garbage Patch and elsewhere. The problem is that plastic and other persistent rubbish cannot be converted into matter that can be usefully employed by organisms, existing natural cycles or by industry.

What is worse, what remains of our waste impairs life. At the macroscopic level this has taken the form of chicks dying after their parents feed them garbage, mistaking it for food. As far as plastic goes, once broken down into its basic molecules it interferes with biological pathways. Since plastic is photodegradable - broken down by light - this process inevitably occurs wherever plastic is exposed to light.

Plastics and other industrial chemicals have entered the human food web and trace amounts of them are already present in our bodies. In light of these developments it becomes clear to me that one of the major tasks before us on the path to sustainability will involve eliminating persistent waste. This will have to be accomplished either by taking advantage of natural processes to capture and recycle our wastes or by establishing synthetic means to do so.

Since I am not an engineer and in any event hold little top-down sway over the planning of manufacturers' production systems, the most salient way I can have an impact on the push to create no impact is, paradoxically enough, as a consumer. I may not be able to dictate what ingredients go into producing one product or service or another, how the outputs of those processes are disposed of, or how much it costs, but I can lend my support to businesses that incorporate sustainable practices. The rationale behind this approach is that if a critical proportion of consumers begins exhibiting such behavior, companies will respond accordingly, having been pitted against one another by the market in a race to do greener business. Once this process is well under way the system will transform itself from the inside out and we might already be witnessing the beginnings of this.

It is easy to criticize this approach, and even easier to criticize it without offering an alternative solution. One objection I expect is to the idea that people would be willing to engage in sustainable purchasing. It is seemingly irrational for someone to pay the higher costs traditionally associated with pursuing a more sustainable lifestyle. However, people engage in seemingly irrational economic behavior on a regular basis. They are willing to pay a premium on a product no materially different from a competing one for such things as a sense of status, aesthetics or other criteria.

Informed consumerism could similarly be motivated by such considerations. What is more, the premium on more sustainable alternatives in part translates into not just these abstract benefits but also material ones, such as cleaner water. If this were not a sufficient incentive it would be mainly because deterioration in environmental quality results from a tragedy of the commons and might warrant greater measures.

The difficulty is that it is not easy to determine what the sustainable alternatives are. You can attribute this to political spin, marketing and greenwashing, cryptic standards or more generally limits on individual knowledge and time. In my effort to find out to what extent the production of plastic could be made more sustainable, I discovered that some plastics are already biodegradable. One would think that this information would be pertinent enough to warrant the implementation of a clear standard and labeling systems for such plastics, but finding out which were was riddled with as much complexity as anyone who has looked into the recycling process for plastics has encountered.

My solution for this and similar issues is to overshoot. Instead of letting the complexity of these issues justify inaction, I have opted for the simple solution of cutting out of my consumer basket products incorporating anything other than those substances I know can be metabolized by ecology or industry. What that really means is that I am now refraining from buying any disposable or nondurable products unless they are biodegradable or fully recyclable - i.e. capable of reconstituting what they originally were - as glass and metal are.

The philosophy behind this is that if something consisting of essentially immortal materials will not be used in one way or another indefinitely, people should not buy it. As such, I have not completely ruled out laptops or other durable goods made from plastic. First, they last, and second, services exist for channeling their components back into production after the useful lives of the products themselves have ended. The reason such services exist is because there is money to be had in them and that will grow increasingly the case as people choose to make more sustainable purchases over those that promote persistent waste.