Society’s view of its waste is changing. Between uses and reuses, a collective work looks at these transformations in our consumption and production methods.
Embodying the failings of the “consumer society”, waste has today partially changed its image. Objects of desire for multinationals engaged in their collection and treatment, they are considered differently by public policies integrating environmental concerns. It is to this new perspective on waste that this short work written by a collective of researchers is devoted. Conducted within the framework of a research contract with the Environment and Energy Management Agency, this work with a sociological and anthropological focus invites us to question more directly a specific aspect of waste treatment: the reuse of used objects. The reflection is conducted in France (345 million tons per year) but also in other Western and sub-Mediterranean countries where informal practices are today competing with the investment of multinationals.
Defined in 2008 by a European directive, reuse refers to “any operation by which products or components that are not waste are used again for a use identical to that for which they were designed” (p. 10). Reuse – distinct from recycling which generally operates on an industrial basis and which is more energy-intensive – therefore implies a change in the status of waste. They now occupy a transitional status before being put back into circulation and a new use.
The six contributions of the book study the forms taken by the activity of reusing used objects, encouraged by public authorities but also by the new values informing consumer practices. Coming from surveys conducted in different waste management spaces and with three main actors (recovery associations, individuals, waste collectors), they shed light on various aspects of reuse activities, from the structuring of a sector to employment conditions and the work of constructing the value of waste.
The end of waste: from reduction to reuse
Although the term reuse covers old activities, often integrated into the informal economy (chiffonnage, biffe, china), the institutionalization of waste recovery and valorization practices is achieved by the creation of rules, structures and work organizations. After a long series of regulations on the collection, treatment and techniques used for waste disposal, a public action in favor of reuse was launched in the early 2000s, notably by the Île-de-France region, which resulted in the creation of around thirty structures for the recovery and resale of used objects. This policy is delegated not to companies but to associations. The structuring of the sector also consists of suggesting to traditional actors such as the Red Cross or Emmaüs that their activity also involves reuse and not just the integration of people in difficulty.
In other countries, such as Egypt, reuse is neither an issue nor a professional sector. No action is being taken to reduce waste. However, the situation is changing as, in cities such as Cairo, the reform of the waste management system is disrupting the informal economy of rag-pickers. These workers, for whom urban waste constitutes a vital resource through the income they earn from their trade, are being forced into competition with private Egyptian and European companies.
Waste and economic gain
One of the central questions of the book is that of the economic value of waste. How do reuse stakeholders integrate rationality into their work? If the primary objective is not profit, it is nevertheless necessary to valorize waste so that it escapes this status of waste for as long as possible. Although non-profit, the associations studied, such as those of the Réseau des Ressourceries, all integrate calculation into their thinking. The stakeholders anticipate the fate of the waste between a guaranteed circulation after collection or orientation towards a recycling channel for objects deemed to be of little value. The sorting and classification tasks are thus decisive for objects whose extremely low price does not reflect the work that was necessary to put them on the market.
While volunteers can perform these essential tasks alongside employees, other practices are observed. In a Berlin association, the option chosen is to put the consumer to work by mobilizing “customers, invited to sort the items themselves by rummaging, for example, in jars filled with buttons of different colors and sizes” (p. 49). Other configurations are highlighted. A Parisian boutique selling second-hand cultural products institutes free prices after its employees noticed that the amounts left by buyers were often higher than those they would have been asked for if the prices had been indicated (p. 51).
Other surveys also highlight the symbolic dimension of objects promised a new use. Carried out between individuals and therefore without intermediaries, the “barn sales” observed in the Swedish countryside largely escape commercial logic. The objects, sold at ridiculous prices or sometimes offered as gifts, contain personal stories that push the sellers to pass them on and thus prevent them from becoming waste (p. 76).
Underemployment without qualifications?
Regardless of the country observed, it is individuals occupying a dominated position in social space who exercise a reuse activity. From the rag-pickers of Cairo to the American workforce mobilized within the framework of programs of workfarethrough the Emmaus companions or the bouâra from Casablanca, this is a staff in a situation of poverty and perceived as unemployable to whom, in Western countries, an opportunity for social integration is given within the framework of this work. A homology appears between the requalification of objects and the “requalification of individuals”. Both have a fragile status and reuse allows this status to evolve for both (p. 31).
The skills specific to reuse are invisible and denied
As for the new French structures, the employment standard is the subsidized contract, financed by local authorities. If the structuring of the sector today involves salaried employment and if this system allows re-employment activities to be taken out of their informality, it must be emphasized at the same time that these are the most atypical forms of contracts, poorly paid and backed by programs to combat unemployment, which leave individuals with both limited prospects of integration into other sectors and very uncertain economic and social autonomy.
The activity is considered more as a support for integration than as real work. While training is gradually being put in place, re-employment as an activity is mainly seen as a pretext for “acquiring the behavioral properties essential for access to traditional employment, such as punctuality, politeness, hierarchical respect, collegiality, respect for one’s commitments, and respect for the production tool” (p. 37). In other words, by considering this activity solely as a support for professional integration, the qualifications specific to re-employment are invisible and denied, which limits the professionalization of the sector.
Reuse in the consumer society
At the end of this collective work, the authors summarize the different issues emerging from this “rise in power” of reuse and this change in the way we look at the waste of the capitalist accumulation society. Will the sector become a market in the same way as that of waste collection, in which players seeking profit will engage? Or are we seeing the emergence of a sector marked by specific practices and values (p. 91)? Can reuse constitute the basis for emancipation from hyperconsumption and industrialists? How will reuse players also manage the tensions between a commercial logic, specific to shops, and a social logic in favor of the integration and living conditions of employees (p. 92)?
Other questions are not raised in this work and would have deserved development. On the one hand, the fact that the public authorities are encouraging the sector to institutionalize itself should soon raise the question of its competition with respect to the new goods market. What position will manufacturers adopt, whose commercial action is gradually being parasitized and competed with by reuse players? The second-hand book market, which is experiencing a new expansion thanks to the development of platforms bringing together new players, professionals and amateurs, is, for example, regularly singled out by rights holders, since the transactions carried out on these sites do not provide them with any income.
On the other hand, no contribution has addressed the issue of digital platforms (recup.net, donnes.org) and their ability to organize the circulation, commercial or not, of used objects. Are individuals driven by ecological concerns, or only by the desire to part with objects? On the side of the reuse actors who engage in online resale (label-emmaus.co), is the organization of work modified, and do the jobs require new qualifications?
These questions, considered as simple observations, do not detract from the intellectual interest of this collective work which provides a stimulating perspective on both questions of work and employment in the sectors of the “green” and solidarity economy, as well as on the transformations of distribution and consumption circuits.