Theory Application: The Injustice of Waste
Waste has become a weapon – for us and our planet. The reality is that we have many ways to mitigate this harm but choose not to in favor of other interests like economics and based on longstanding racial hierarchies which determine who is deserving of bearing the harm of environmental waste. Thus, we find ourselves stuck in “self-induced denial” (Norgaard 2006), climate change denialism to uphold political and economic interests (Klein 2015), the social organization of space and distance (Norgaard 2006; Flora 2010) and the “individualization of responsibility” with eludes the historic, systemic, and institutional forces behind environmental waste harms (Maniates 2020). Thus, these “disasters are not out of our control; they are not “accidents” as we sometimes hear them referred to in the news media... it was social organization — a series of identifiable managerial steps, collections of beliefs, set of regulations, or other social structures — that led to to the environmental problems.”
Waste is uniquely different from other aspects of the climate change conversation. Waste is something that is thrown away or let go and never thought about; you’ve gotten rid of; it’s not yours anymore, it's their responsibility. Our mentality has become:
“We live Here. We get our goods, like oil and cheap gadgets, from Over There, and Away is where things go when we don’t want them anymore” (Flora 2010)
Environmental justice (EJ) attempts to reconcile these issues. There are two main tenets of EJ: 1) All individuals have the right to be protected from environmental harm, and 2) Prevention is the preferred strategy: eliminating threat before harm occurs (Bullard 2003). The EJ movement as we know it today began, in Warren County, NC – a rural, poor, mostly Black community – by protesting toxic waste landfills for PCBs in their communities (Bullard 2003). That they chose an area with such demographics is a reflection of how poor, rural, and Black or brown communities are scapegoated to bear this harm, having the least to do with its creation. Finally, detoxification was completed, however, Bullard (2003) reminds us that “environmental remediations is not the same as reparations.” The story of Love Canal and its location on a toxic waste dump and the arduous struggle to get justice for this community parallels that of Warren County (McCarthy and King).
Image is a graphic of. a desolate wasteland with smokestacks and nuclear waste in the background. In the foreground there is a fist raise with a nature scene overlayed on it, representing the fight for environmental justice.
Bullard (2003) reiterates that “environmental decision-making and policies often mirror the power arrangements of the dominant society and its institutions” (Bullaed 2003) thus, ”the dominant environment protection paradigm reinforces instead of challenges the stratification of people (according to race, ethnicity, status, power, and so on), places (central cities, suburbs, rural areas, unincorporated areas, native american reservations, and so on), and types of work (for example, office workers are afforded greater protection that farmworkers). The dominant paradigm exists to manage, regulate, and distribute risks''.
The protesters and defenders of Warren County coined the phrase “environmental racism” (ER). (Bullard 2003). They saw, before the data, that toxic wastes were being dumped and located in specific areas. ER refers to the policies, laws. institutions, and practices that advantage or disadvantage people, or groups. neighborhoods, and/or communities because of race and racism (Bullard 2003).A study born because of the Warren County protests “found that race was the most potent variable in predicting where such [waste] facilities would be located — more powerful than poverty, land values, and home ownership” (Bullard 2023). The issue of waste is not neutral, it is calculating and applies value judgments about who should have to deal with it and its consequences. ER demands justice, but how would we go about that?
The EJ framework incoporates distributive justice, procedural justice, and justice-as-recognition (Bullard 2003). Distributive justice, in the case of waste, would mean an end to concentrating, almost exclusively, toxic waste dumps, landfills, and incinerators in marginalized and poor communities. Procedural justice would mean that, because “POC are often victims of land use decisions that mirror the power arrangements of the dominant society” (Bullard 2003), our zoning system, which designates poor communities of color as the worst (to live, invest, or build in), and thus as suitable for waste disposal/dumping and incinerator locations, wanting to avoid harm to “better area” would need to be overhauled. Finally, justice as recognition would mean recognizing that BIPOC have historically been locked in to living in toxic environments and toxic jobs due racial capitalism (Bullard 2003); this is the human waste component of the Treadmill of Production as BIPOC folks are forced into menial, toxic jobs to survive (Schnaiberg & Gould 2009). Those most affected have rarely had a say in whether their communities would become wasted and had little to no support in the aftermath.
The EJ framework employs the “precautionary principle” which asks “how little harm is possible?” rather than “how much harm is allowable” (Bullard 2003). However, this principle still falls short. The question’s subtext is “how little harm is possible for us [the west, the white, the rich, the colonizers, etc]” Often, harm is minimized in white, rich affluent communities whereas it's seen as acceptable and even natural in BIPOC and/or low-income communities. Further, major polluters have become master manipulators of the principle. When we consider how little harm is possible we have a narrow scope of who we’re talking about. Polluters and the elite work to create an illusion that they are doing as little harm as possible here, though, not elsewhere and have little regard for how much harm is being exported elsewhere. As such, large polluters export their waste from “Here” to “Over There” (Flora 2010); this is a reflection of “the social organization of space” which separates people from their waste and its impacts (Norgaard 2006) The most polluting (and rich) nations export their dirtiest emissions and wastes elsewhere to be dealt with – to the global south, those with no other option for livelihood – to imaginarily lower emissions statistics here. Those who are thus dealing with the dangerous waste from places like the US have their only livelihood coming from a death threat. The issue is that “we’ve failed to see that Here, Over There, and Away are simply one place with interchangeable names” (Flora 2010). On the other hand, “The EJ movement challenges toxic colonialism, enviro racism, the international toxics trade, economic black mail, corporate welfare, and human rights violations, at home and abroad” (Bullard 2003).
The term “environmental justice” may be new, but the engagement with it and the need for it are immemorial. We, as a humanity, are calling out with desperation about the state of our planet and the waste we are creating to kill it while simultaneously continuing to idolize single-use plastic and invoking “self-induced denial” (Norgaard 2006) to stagnate change. Environmental justice is responding.
Works Cited
Bullard, R. D. (2008). Environmental Justice in the Twenty-First Century. In The Quest for Environmental Justice:
Human Rights and the politics of pollution. essay, Sierra Club Books.
Flora, G. (2010). Remapping Relationships: Humans in Nature. In R. Heinberg & D.
Lerch (Eds.), The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s sustainability crises (pp.
184–193). essay, Watershed Media.
Klein, N. (2015, July 6). Capitalism vs. the climate. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/capitalism-
Maniates, M. (2020). Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? In L. King & D.
M. Auriffeille (Eds.), Environmental sociology: From analysis to action. essay, Rowman & Littlefield.
Norgaard, K. M. (2006). “we don’t really want to know.” Organization & Environment, 19(3), 347–370.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026606292571
Schnaiberg, A., & Gould, K. A. (2009). Treadmill Predispositions and Social Responses: Population, Consumption, and
Technological Change. In L. King & D. McCarthy
(Eds.), Environmental sociology: From Analysis to Action (2nd ed., pp. 51–60). essay, Rowman & Littlefield.