Fig 1: Aluminium cans disposes into a recycling bin, Image by Giulio Laura
Colloquially recycling is understood to be a ‘social good’, ‘doing your part’ for the ‘environment’. Yet in Reading Ads Socially, Robert Goldman illustrates the high energy and environmental demands it creates. [31] Virgin material, pollutants and greenhouse gasses are all part of the process and often creating products that are non-recyclable. [1] The meaning of the word recycling has been neutralized or Recuperated in the words of Guy Debord [2] and functions as a Commodity-sign not a social good. It Has been decontextualized from its original assumption or in Goldmans words:
recycling has been “abstracted from [its] context and then reframed in terms of the assumptions and interpretive rules of the advertising framework” through which it is promoted. - Robert Goldman [3]
Recycling perpetuates the inherent need for the disposability of objects to even exist. It is trying to sell the idea of resolving the problem by giving a social licence to waste. Wish-Cycling is the act of disposing of a material that has little to no chance of being recovered, into a recycling bin. In many ways the whole recycling system is trying to sell that idea with little to no chance of actually tackling the waste problem and furthermore justifying the waste.
We must think upstream, as much as mopping up the problem is necessary, we must close the metaphorical tap to the problem. Manufacturing of goods, mining etc. must be rethought for the problem to be tackled. I believe recycling is a social good and necessity but not the resolution to the problem. What I'm suggesting is that waste is an infrastructure rather than a behaviour. Home recycling and general disposing in a domestic context is a small moment in a large system.
Works Cited:
Liboiron, Max. “Recycling Has a Crisis of Meaning.” Discard Studies (20/09/2012) https://discardstudies.com/2012/09/20/recycling-as-a-crisis-of-meaning/. [1]
Debord, Guy. “Society of the Spectacle”. London, England: Rebel Press, London. 1992. [2]
Goldman, Robert. Reading Ads Socially. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. [3]
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