Photo by art_es_anna.
The Modern Predicament
The amount of material needed to sustain the modern world is somewhat ridiculous– and what better way to understand how much substance we buy is there than looking at the trash we produce? For example, in 2005, the United States produced 246 million tons of trash.
This is an extremely large amount of trash to visualize and sociologists tell us that the human mind cannot meaningfully grasp numbers higher than a few thousand. A better way to put it into perspective: A blue whale, the largest animal in the world, weighs about 160 tons. Therefore, 246 million tons of trash is equal to 1.64 million blue whales of trash. Just the heart of a blue whale is the size of a car.
Chris Jordan is an artist that is focused on displaying the extent of American consumerism. I think that through his work, we can develop a more concrete image of the incredible amount of things we use. His Web site can be found here. He says:
The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits.
Trash encompasses unwanted food, cans, computers, boxes, etc. The implications of throwing out trash might bring a sense of guilt sometimes because you’re not recycling. But here’s a thought: Trash kills. Not quickly and violently, but slowly, dismissively, and subtly.
For around $1.50 USD, about 60,000 local workers including children risk their lives and limbs to scramble for anything out of your old computer. In Guiyu, Guangdong, picking through electronic waste has replaced rice production. The city is an electronic slaughterhouse. For example, some workers go to the local river where they make small fires to heat an extremely toxic mixture called Aqua Regia (Latin for “king’s water”), which is composed of 75% hydrochloric acid and 25% nitric acid. This process is extremely harmful to both humans and the environment. The residents of Guiyu cannot drink local water, and many villagers have become sick and weak. China takes in about 72% of the world’s electronic waste, which is about 35 million tons. Most of this waste is toxic and dangerous and long-term effects are still unclear.
A New Framework for Trash Disposal: Environmental Justice
The U.S. goes through at least 426,000 cell phones everyday (Chris Jordan art) in addition to countless other electronic supplies. How can we re-conceptualize this amount of stuff in a way that is more human, more ethical, and more pragmatic? Let’s look at the philosophy of John Rawls. He says, “In justice as fairness, men agree to share one another’s fate.” Rawls emphasizes that legitimacy is more of a technicality than a moral standard, and that justice is the maximal moral standard. Although it is “legal” for companies to throw electronic waste in Guiyu because the locals get paid for compensation, this is not necessarily just.
The environmental justice movement emerged in the early 1980s as a concept in the United States. Dr. Robert Ballard, a prominent environmental justice advocate says:
The environmental justice movement has basically redefined what environmentalism is all about. It basically says that the environment is everything: where we live, work, play, go to school, as well as the physical and natural world. And so we can’t separate the physical environment from the cultural environment. We have to talk about making sure that justice is integrated throughout all of the stuff that we do.
Before the rise of environmental justice, the trend of the environmental movement has been neglectful of difference and pluralism, especially in the United States. As Wolff notes, “the genius of American politics is its ability to treat matters of principle as though they were conflicts of interest.” (quoted from here). Scholsberg writes:
In addition to the lack of both diversity and attention to environmental inequalities, the form that mainstream environmental organizing has taken has angered grassroots activists attentive to resource and environmental justice issues. Specifically, critiques have addressed the centralization and hierarchical structure, the lack of democratic and community participation, and the general evolution of the major groups into professionalized interest groups practically indistinguishable from their adversaries. (Read as a Google Book)
Environmental justice shifts the focus from the environment as a commodity to be preserved to a more holistic understanding of the environment as an interactive forum that is part of experience, whether it be for humans, animals or plants.
New legal precedents should be set in the realm of trash disposal to be environmentally just, so cities in the deathly condition of Guiyu do not exist. As Keith Lewis, of the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario and an object of the history of nuclear waste in the United States says, “There is nothing moral about tempting a starving man with money.”
More sites on Guiyu:
Guiyu, Largest E-waste Site on Earth (Video) – China-pix
China’s electronic waste village – Photo Essays – Time
Guiyu: A Grim Recycling Landscape – Recycling Today
Where computers go to die – and kill – Salon
More on environmental justice:
Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism (Google Book) – David Scholsberg
Environmantal Justice (Google Book)– Peter S. Wenz
Environmental Justice: An Interview with Robert Ballard – Earth First! Journal
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