Waste: A Failure of Consumer Society

The problem of waste exemplifies much that is wrong with modern consumer society, and with our collective approach to the management of resources. Nothing is wasted in nature, begging the question of how best to define waste, which comes in multiple forms and can be addressed in multiple ways. We are producing more waste as the human population grows and as wasteful habits spread from the North to the South. There are many options to dealing with waste – including prevention, recovery, and disposal – but the political and economic pressures shaping these options vary significantly by country. Increased production of toxic, hazardous, and radioactive waste has added troubling new dimensions to the question of how best to deal with waste. An international dimension has been added to the debate over waste by efforts either to ship it elsewhere or to dump it into the ocean. The problem of waste exemplifies much that is wrong with modern consumer society, and with our collective approach to the management of resources. Waste was all but unknown until the beginning of the twentieth century, the low levels of consumption combining with the scarcity of goods and money to encourage producers and consumers to reuse almost everything. But as consumers became wealthier, as they demanded and were given more choice, and as they increasingly saw belongings as temporary and disposable, so they created more waste: the consumer society became the disposable society.