Session for ESEH 2007.
This panel explores the historical context of the recycling practices of consumers and businesses. While originally concerned with preservation of scarce resources, recycling has increasingly taken on a distinct green shade. Consumers in the affluent parts of the world rarely need to recycle for economic reasons. For them, recycling creates a connection between their everyday habits and the global environment. On an industrial scale, the resource preservation aspect of recycling is more important than ever. Energy-intensive industries like aluminum processing make significant savings by recycling instead of producing virgin material. At the same time, recycling is one of the most important tools companies use to reduce their ecological footprint and portray themselves in a green light. Recycling thus has both a material and an ideological component. The papers in this panel explore the cultural and material transformations of recycling in Europe and the US, with a focus on interactions between consumers, producers, and policy makers.
Participants
- “Teaching Consumers to Recycle: Approaches to aluminum can recycling in Norway and the US,” Finn Arne Jørgensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- “Recycling and Modernity: Waste and the politics of Environment,” Tim Cooper, University of St Andrews