Consumption is driven by the profit motive of capitalism and is directly proportional to the amount of waste produced. In a society where most products are built to eventually break, it is inevitable that many of these cheaply manufactured items will end up in a landfill. According to Vergara and Tchobanoglous (2012), municipal solid waste is defined as “all solid or semisolid materials disposed by residents and businesses, excluding hazardous wastes and wastewater” (p. 279). This waste is transported from residential homes and businesses to concentrated sites called landfills. Not only do landfills reek of toxins, but they also threaten the health and safety of the individuals who live near these toxic mountains of trash. In developed countries where trash is typically collected on a regular basis, people do not see their trash accumulate, making it easy to forget how much one disposes of and not feel accountable. Those living within the vicinity of landfills do not have the luxury to remove themselves from the effects of trash accumulation. The individuals working and residing in and around landfills are typically not the ones producing the most trash. They contribute less to the problem but are burdened with the costs. Effective solutions on the individual, municipal, state, national, and international level to raise consumer awareness and change behavior are necessary to lessen the impacts of environmental, health, and labor issues associated with municipal solid waste. These solutions must be attuned to the needs and concerns of those who are disproportionately affected by the burden of other people’s waste.
The profit motive of capitalism creates the goal to acquire as much capital as possible to spend on goods and services. Suburbs are the main drivers of consumption that increase the demand of products, leading to resource exploitation and the need to produce more. The system works because goods break, which forces people to keep consuming. The goal of businesses and corporations is to maximize profits, and one strategy is the mass-production of items, leading to overconsumption. However, these products are often cheaply made, forcing consumers to throw them out after only a few uses. This cycle of consumption due to capitalistic drives contributes to growing landfills full of cheaply manufactured products that leach toxins.
Waste produced by industrialized countries is often more harmful to the environment than that of industrializing countries as the composition includes more technologically complex materials and less organic substances. Industrialized cities tend to throw away greater quantities of waste with more recyclables and electronics while industrializing cities discard less and have high biodegradable fractions in their waste (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). Industrialized cities are throwing away more harmful materials, and additionally, are mixing organic, recyclable, and biodegradable materials in landfills, which produces methane gas during decomposition, contributing to the crisis of global climate change (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). The composition of waste varies within a city over time and reflects technological and cultural trends (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). In industrialized countries, the capitalist drive for profit causes consumers to purchase trendy products that are highly disposable. The annual introduction of new Apple products such as the latest iPhone shows how short the life cycle of technology is because consumers are pushed to feel the constant need to upgrade to new and improved technology. Cell phones are a more complex waste known as electronic waste or e-waste, which includes all electronic devices. According to McAllister, Magee, and Hale (2014), e-waste is more difficult to manage because it contains heavy metals and persistent toxic substances that are not biodegradable and contaminate natural systems. E-waste also presents a wide array of health risks that can cause permanent damage to human organs and body systems (McAllister, Magee, & Hale, 2014). This complex waste is more difficult to manage safely, so e-waste is often exported to industrializing countries like China for recycling (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). Due to the demand of cheap mass-produced commodities rooted in capitalism, industrialized countries extract resources from industrializing countries to create technology. Moreover, because our society gives a limited-time-value to these products, they soon become waste and are sent back to industrializing countries to be recycled.
Waste management directly harms the health of those who live near landfills because of the liquid waste residue from the degradation of solid waste that contains over a hundred toxic chemicals which pose significant health threats (McAllister, et al., 2014). Improper waste management leads to waste accumulation, which attracts disease vectors, clogs drains, and creates habitats for mosquitoes (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). While landfills may be distant from affluent neighborhoods in developed countries, they are not far from civilization and can directly affect the lives of those residing near them. Both living and working near landfills has been associated with congenital birth defects, cancer incidence, and respiratory illnesses like asthma (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). These are environmental justice issues as these health impacts disproportionately affect poor communities of color because they are more likely to live and work near landfills. According to Scanlan (2011), environmental racism is the overlapping of environmental inequality with racial injustice in the policy making arena, the targeting of toxic waste disposal sites, and enforcement of laws.
While municipal strategies for effective waste management are intended to simplify collection, in reality, they can encourage consumers to buy and throw away even more. As municipalities took responsibility for collecting, transporting and disposing of household waste, a shift occurred from informal management to formal, centralized management in the United States (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). Because of this change, citizens lost responsibility and accountability for their waste and could throw out more. In order to decrease waste production, consumers must feel responsible for the amount of waste they produce. Furthermore, if trash collection occurred biweekly or monthly instead of weekly, people would be forced to dispose of less. Citizens would be stuck living near their accumulated trash, and while incomparable to living next to a landfill, it would make the issue feel more personal and much closer to home. When citizens are allowed by the government to throw out as much as they please, there is no stopping point. However, if the government limited the frequency of trash pick up per household, changes in consumer habits would ensue. The accumulation would force citizens to throw away less, and therefore, learn to consume less.
Instead of municipal waste management strategies that take responsibility for collecting the city’s waste, programs that incentivize recycling and composting while taxing waste based on quantity can make consumers more conscious of their consumer habits. Implementing and enforcing a program such as “Pay As You Throw” on a local, regional, state, or national level would make citizens more aware of the quantity of waste they throw away and encourage them to consume less. Most citizens pay a flat-rate, monthly fee for trash collection, but “Pay As You Throw” taxes consumers based on how much waste they produce (Vergara & Tchobanoglous, 2012). This system has already been implemented in several other countries and has been associated with waste reduction. It is similar to paying a small fee for a plastic bag at a store as this gives the consumer a choice along with a minor consequence if they choose the less sustainable option. When grocery stores do not charge for bags, the choice has already been made and the consumer does not have to think twice. This is why a tax based on the quantity of one’s waste would be effective because it would force consumers to become more conscious about their consuming habits.
In sum, effective solutions on individual and municipal levels that create consumer consciousness and limit waste production by discouraging consumption are necessary to lessen the environmental, health, and labor effects that burden the lives of those living near accumulated waste. Underlying all issues of domestic waste is the profit-driven economic system of capitalism, which creates a cycle of overproduction followed by overconsumption, ending in overflowing landfills. Like nature, humans cannot be separated from waste. While the United States can ship their waste to other countries for reuse, recycling, or decomposition, it can never be fully removed from human beings. The trash we produce stays with us on this planet, and the burdens of accumulated waste is felt by others. Low-income communities and people of color experience the burdens due to environmental racism, which places toxic landfills near the people with the least expected resistance and agency. Solutions such as “Pay As You Throw” or limiting the frequency of trash collection does not fix the effects of environmental racism but takes steps to lessen the burden. Implementing and effectively enforcing policies that limit and tax waste collection while incentivizing more sustainable waste practices is necessary to raise awareness, make consumers feel directly accountable for their waste, and change the cycle of the treadmill of production.