Economies of Recycling: The Global

Transformation of Materials, Values and

Social Relations

BOOK REVIEW
Edited by Catherine Alexander and Joshua Reno.
London: Zed Books, 2012.

Alexander and Reno’s edited volume draws together a range of cases that provoca-
tively challenge dominant representations of waste and recycling. The chapters build on
the growing contemporary literature, primarily in geography and anthropology, on waste
and the moral economy of waste practices. They take us beyond managerial questions of
how waste is produced and managed toward deeper ethical questions of what waste and
its materiality means. Although, as the title indicates, the book is largely about recycling,
this term is used in a broad and loose sense. The chapters examine the flows of unwanted
goods, their repurposing, and how values are constructed and deconstructed in relation to
these materials. Waste is clearly shown to be about more than the environment and 435
economics narrowly defined. Waste and its economic flows have moral and ethical
dimensions. While this point has been demonstrated by northern waste scholars, most
notably in the work of Gay Hawkins, this book shifts the conversation out of the northern

89(4):435–436. © 2013 Clark University.

household toward grounded international communities and economies.
The volume contains some more conventional stories, such as the flows of e-waste
(Tong and Wang) and community waste collections and the negative association between
waste and waste workers (Fredericks). However, even these pieces draw us into
underexplored frames. Tong and Wang relate e-waste flows to the shortage of materials
generated by poor state planning, expanding their explanation beyond the typical ques-
tions of justice and economics. Fredericks similarly uses waste as a way to explore
municipal politics and challenge the role of development nongovernmental organiza-
tions. Other chapters push the boundaries of the notion of waste and recycling into
important new arenas. Household recycling—the topic that dominates public and aca-
demic discourse—is contextualized in the introduction: if all household waste were to
disappear, it would account for but a small fraction of waste. In this context, broadening
our gaze becomes essential for understanding waste and its social, economic and envi-
ronmental role.
Alexander and Reno’s introduction provides a useful context for the text. It identifies
and challenges the prevailing notion of recycling as an inherently positive activity by
insisting that we examine “how recycling is carried out, where materials go to be
revalued and reinserted into mainstream material flows, and the traces that are left behind
www.economicgeography.org

as all this stuff swirls around the world: localized concentrations of toxic wastes, linger-
ing, uncanny memories or imaginaries of previous material incarnations and the harm
done to the bodies of labourers who carry out this work, which is often dangerous and
unprotected” (3). What is important is that here and in the conclusion, we are taken back
to the root of the term recycling. The authors contrast the idealism of a circular material
flow with case after case of noncircular flows, most evident in Garcier’s figures that show
the noncyclical patterns of the nuclear waste “cycle” (84–85).
Section 1, on global waste flows, may be of the greatest use for economic geographers
who are interested in commodity chains or global production networks. Pieces on fabric
(Norris), old ships (Mike Crang, Nicky Gregson, Farid Ahamed, Raihana Ferdous, and
Nasreen Akhter), nuclear fuel (Garcier), and e-waste (Tong and Wang) show how waste
flows internationally, often in complex and unexpected patterns. Crang et al.’s chapter
 BOOK REVIEW

(as usual) provides a particularly insightful and enjoyable read. Building on their other
work on ship-breaking, Crang et al. present an account of the secondary market for ship
furniture. Their emphasis on the ways in which this waste is valued—for its disposability
and as a sign of global connectivity—moves the analysis beyond simple economics to
suggest an understanding of what morally and materially drives economies.
The chapters in Section 2 (The Ethics of Waste Labour) provide ethnographic studies
of particular waste and recycling sites. What is likely to be of interest to economic
geographers is the strong sense of connection identified among individuals, their work,
and the objects with which they work. Faulk’s respondents frame work as a right;
Fredericks shows the desire of informal collectors to be seen as legitimate workers. In her
chapter, Bear in particular contrasts abstract notions of capital, labor, and economic value
with the framings used by her respondents. For some, “their own vitality was inextricably
linked to that of the objects in their care” (192), while for others, labor merely “releases
the fluid potential of capital that essentially inheres in objects” (200). Miller’s work on
urban politics fits less neatly into this section, but it contributes to the book’s broader
theme by demonstrating that waste is not always marginal but can be used to bring the
436 concerns of peripheral areas to the core.
Section 3 links waste and recycling to the former lives of particular objects.
Halvorson’s chapter is the only one that focuses explicitly on “redemptive economies” of
Northern donations of unwanted materials to the global South; it examines the flow of
medical aid from the United States to Madagascar. Here, the moral ambiguities are
central, particularly because this flow is facilitated through religious organizations.
Halvorson draws attention to the limitations of discursive attempts to transcend the
context of missionary relationships as unequal economic power relations remain. Reno
reflects on the boundaries between home and public and how they play out in legal
contexts through an examination of how waste is used by the police, including the
well-explored discussion of using household waste as police evidence, as well as a
discussion of a new area—so-called sewer forensic epidemiology. The latter technique
measures the levels of narcotics in the sewers, enabling the production of population data
on drug use. Finally, Alexander discusses pre- and post-Soviet ideas of domestic repair.
While there is no clear binary between these two periods in terms of understandings of
waste, changes in need and ethics over time are seen to shape how and why repair is
undertaken.
Although one could of course point to specific weaknesses of some individual chap-
ters, as a whole this is a successful volume that fills a-much needed gap in our under-
standing of waste and recycling. Far from providing us with answers, it demonstrates
both the limited scope of much waste work and the potential of waste to help us rethink
our economies as well as our material and relational moralities. In sum, it shows the value
of examining waste economies not just for the study of waste, but because our relation-
ship with waste reshapes our selves. And understanding our relationship with waste helps
us to understand ourselves.
Mary Lawhon
University of Cape Town