With population growth and increased consumption, we are producing more waste than before. In 2016, New York was widely cited as the world’s most wasteful city, using the most energy, disposing of the most trash, and using more water than any other city. While cities and corporates continue to introduce waste reducing schemes and encourage recycling, more robust efforts are needed to address the growing negative environmental and social impacts of waste. 

There are questions here. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre, in a ‘bureaucratic society of controlled consumption’, how do we control waste, and whose responsibility is that? Where capitalism has infringed every aspect of our lives, and bureaucracies – ranging from states to corporates – tell us what we must consume, and how, to be deemed modern or progressive or cool, what habits are acceptable in today’s context of environmental sustainability? Can individuals really change their habits around waste, or even change their consumption patters to allow for reduced waste? Or is this the responsibility of governments – will individuals only change if stronger structures are set in place? For instance, what about proper infrastructure to collect garbage, or adequate monitoring measures?

I recently came across the poem, As I Go, by Zimbabwean poet, Julius Chingono. Drawing on the critical class dynamics, an assumption is that the poor makes a home out of the everyday trash he encounters, thus serving as a stark reminder that ‘one man’s trash can be another man’s treasure’.

A few years ago, I watched the documentary, Garbage Dreams, which depicts the lives of three teenage boys as they grow up in the world’s largest garbage village in Cairo. The boys are part of the people known as the Zaballeen (or ‘the garbage people) who have, for years, survived by picking trash produced by the city, and recycling the garbage they collect. In the current state, their work and survival are threatened by the presence of multinational corporates, raising tension between tradition and modernism, and issues of poverty and globalisation.

 

Another documentary, Plastic China, draws attention to familiar, and especially children, impacted by first world waste. However, China, the world’s biggest market for household waste, banned the import of plastic waste earlier this year, causing serious concerns in countries such as the UK, where waste will now pile up, bringing pressures on national and local authorities for more urgent measures to tackle plastic waste.

Satire can often be powerful in bringing about change. In Lebanon, with rubbish piling up in the capital, activists have produced a parody video highlighting the reality of the country’s waste crisis.

At the same time, there is no end to getting creative with trash! Pop Trash, to be released in July this year, sees artist Jason Mecier create portraits of celebrities using various trash items. There is a video here that gives a sneak peak of what can be expected, and as the review states, the portrayals are ‘beautiful as they are outrageous’.

As well as raising awareness of the growing problem of waste, I believe these creative pieces are also forms of resistance. Waste, not only impacts the environment, but seriously threatens the health and well-being of individuals, as well as exacerbating conditions of poverty, injustice, and inequality. Where individual and collective behaviour and attitude need urgent change, as fiction writers, we need to get bolder and more robust in trash talking.

How would you talk about trash?