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A few weeks back I shared a Swap Saturday post to our social media that suggested participants in the next climate strike source their materials from the recycling bins, or dumpsters, rather than buying new poster board. You see, I was raised by a man that may as well have “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” tattooed across his chest. So, finding use from materials that someone else has deemed garbage is not foreign to me. That’s why it only made sense to me when I saw it really popularizing as a phenomenon in mainstream environmental conversation. Search dumpster diving on YouTube and you will find a plethora of videos of people sifting through dumpster bins, primarily behind shopping centres and apartment complexes. Environmentalists have been endorsing dumpster diving in mainstream conversation for its circular economic properties. The circular economy is an economic model that has been proposed to replace the traditional linear model (i.e. make, use, dispose) for one that works to help save the planet from ecological collapse. The model proposes “we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.”

The concept of reusing ‘waste’ for new products is hardly new. In fact, in 2013, Waste Management, “North America’s largest environmental solutions provider and leading residential recycler,'' announced they would be transitioning from a waste collection company to a ‘resource management’ company, responsible for the breakdown and reuse of materials. Transitioning to a resource management company exemplifies the idea of a circular economy for it bonds (or connects) the end of the production chain with the very beginning of the production chain, as depicted in the graphic above. Considering the company responsible for collecting the waste is now interested in having materials that can be repurposed for profits, rather than materials that cannot easily be repurposed and, therefore, bring no value to the company, leads to increased pressure on the producers to use better materials. By better, I mean materials that can be easily repurposed so that they can be used once again. Moreover, Waste Management could incentivize producers to only use materials that can be repurposed through a working partnership. Having the beginning of the production chain linked to the end of the production chain is central to the idea of a circular economy.

Back in 2013, Jo Confino conversed with long-time environmentalist William McDonough addressing the immediate demands for alternative conversation about waste, and how reshaping mainstream conversation is necessary for a healthier planet (find the article here). According to Confino, “waste implies that the material has been contaminated - it is dirty and may bring me harm if I am to use it.” In their conversation, McDonough recommends omitting the use of waste in reference to used materials altogether. Flash forward six years and we are at last seeing a shift in mainstream conversation about waste, in that there is an obvious attempt to significantly disrupt how people think of items as contaminated to instead thinking of them as having the potential for reuse. This is largely a result of the euphemistic language widely employed by environmentalists. For example, an environmentalist named Talara Blackwood of Australia refers to herself as an “urban forager” (watch her interview here) in reference to her work searching for and repurposing materials that have been deemed ‘waste’. Ideally, by reshaping how society interacts with what is considered garbage, as a whole, we should see a significant decrease in the amount of material sent to landfills.  

All in all, decoding society’s disgust for garbage is essential in understanding how best to influence societal change in the repurposing of materials. Understanding the perceived relationship between individuals and waste is absolutely necessary for positively influencing that relationship in the environment’s favour. This is not to say that you won’t find some gnarly items in dumpster bins and that precautions shouldn’t be taken - always wear gloves and good shoes if sifting through dumpster bins - but it is to say that there are “diamonds in the rough” and that not nearly all materials that end up in dumpsters, and landfills, should be there. Like any systemic change, dumpster diving and destigmatizing waste is a movement that started with just a few people. Luckily, we are starting to witness these values being adopted by society at large and I am eager to see how this phenomenon of dumpster diving contributes to decreasing the amount of reusable material sent to landfills.

Sources:

1. http://gearedforgreen.com/plastic-recycling/recycling-for-industry/

2. http://www.wrap.org.uk/about-us/about/wrap-and-circular-economy

3. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/dumpster-diving-design-for-waste-free-world

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKOdETMjkLA

5. https://www.wm.com/us/en/myhome

6. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/dumpster-diving-garbage-gold