Through the window of a car, a hand throws a pouch which will break open on the side of the road. Trash spreads at the feet of a majestic figure wearing moccasins. An Indian with a feather with big plans. He is looking at you, facing the camera. He is crying. Zoom on the tear rolling on his hollow cheek. Voice-over: “Pollution starts with people. They are the ones who can end it. On-screen overlay: “Keep America Beautiful”.
In the United States, there has long been a deposit system for the sale of beverages: the customer paid a few extra cents, which were returned when he returned the empty bottle. This container reuse system – to be distinguished from the recycling of materials (the glass was not refounded, the bottle was refilled) – was efficient, durable, and minimized wastage.
Things started to change in the 1930s. After Prohibition, when business resumed, the beer manufacturers invented the metal can. The move to disposable containers opened up attractive prospects: eliminating collection and repackaging costs, eliminating intermediaries (including local bottlers), concentrating production while extending distribution over large distances.
Generalizing the disposable of course involved increasing the production of waste, but manufacturers were washing their hands of it. In the early 1950s, soda makers, led by Pepsi, followed by Coca-Cola, followed suit with brewers.
The practice of recycling was thus promoted by the industry as an alternative to the projects of compulsory deposit and prohibition of disposable containers. At the end of this victorious counter-offensive led by industrial lobbies, recycling became the exclusive solution, rather than the complement to binding programs of reduction at source. As the first sorting practices encouraged by the industry took place, the volume of household waste exploded.
Thus, at the very moment when manufacturers dismantle the deposit system, exempting themselves from reprocessing costs, and take structurally anti-ecological decisions, they call for the ecological empowerment of consumers. A typical case of double morality, where one proclaims a norm valid for all except for oneself. Empower others to better take responsibility away from yourself.
With the help of publicity campaigns, manufacturers have succeeded in constructing the issue of waste as a matter of individual responsibility, disconnected from the production process, unrelated to reducing the creation of waste at source. For the individuals that we are, it is probably flattering to imagine that everything rests on our frail shoulders. But, while we sort our packaging in our kitchens, in a way that is less immediately visible to other actors, starting with the municipalities, had to invest and go into debt to finance the infrastructure required by the exponential production of household waste.
Accountability is also the name of this transfer of contradiction in the psychic life of individuals; the name of a new figure of miserable conscience, associated with a form of government by dilemma.
In any case if you have a large quantity of junk at your home or business place, a good idea is to rent a large metallic bin so you can remove everything in one go. The hauling company will deliver it to your location and pick it when it is full, so all you have to do is fill it. This is a convenient yet economical way to reduce pollution.