The waste commons in an emerging resource

The Waste Commons in an Emerging Resource Recovery Waste Regime: Contesting Property and Value in Melbourne’s Hard Rubbish Collectionsgeo RUTH LANE School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Vic. 3800, Australia. Email: ruth.lanemonash.edu Received 17 January 2011; Revised 30 April 2011; Accepted 3 May 2011 Abstract Practices of scavenging of Melbourne’s hard rubbish collections are examined in the context of an emerging resource recovery waste regime linked with policy shifts that promote resource recovery over disposal through landfill. Waste regimes have many parallels with regimes in natural resource management and contestations over property are an important but neglected aspect. Based on research conducted primarily in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I argue that hard rubbish on the kerbside forms an informal ‘waste commons’ that facilitates various forms of revaluing of municipal household waste. Results of a survey conducted by householders scavenging of their own hard rubbish piles suggest that informal scavenging activities were more effective for diverting waste from landfill by recycling than the formal processes of council hard rubbish contractors. Interviews conducted with residents, waste management contractors and self identified ‘professional’ scavengers revealed different perspectives on the waste commons and highlighted the contested nature of property in hard rubbish. Together with the survey findings, they allow tentative conclusions to be drawn about the role of the waste commons in the transition from a regime of disposal through landfill to one focused on resource recovery. KEY WORDS scavenging, waste; property; recycling; Melbourne; waste regime; commons; household

Recovery Waste Regime: Contesting Property and Value in Melbourne’s Hard Rubbish Collectionsgeor_704395 407

RUTH LANE

School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Clayton, Vic 3800, Australia Email: ruth.lane@monash.edu

Received 17 January 2011; Revised 30 April 2011; Accepted 3 May 2011

Abstract

Practices of scavenging of Melbourne’s hard rubbish collections are examined in

the context of an emerging resource recovery waste regime linked with policy

shifts that promote resource recovery over disposal through landfill Waste

regimes have many parallels with regimes in natural resource management and

contestations over property are an important but neglected aspect Based on

research conducted primarily in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I argue

that hard rubbish on the kerb-side forms an informal ‘waste commons’ that

facilitates various forms of revaluing of municipal household waste Results of a

survey conducted by householders scavenging of their own hard rubbish piles

suggest that informal scavenging activities were more effective for diverting

waste from landfill by recycling than the formal processes of council hard rubbish

contractors Interviews conducted with residents, waste management contractors

and self identified ‘professional’ scavengers revealed different perspectives on the

waste commons and highlighted the contested nature of property in hard rubbish

Together with the survey findings, they allow tentative conclusions to be drawn

about the role of the waste commons in the transition from a regime of disposal

through landfill to one focused on resource recovery

KEY WORDS scavenging, waste; property; recycling; Melbourne; waste

regime; commons; household

Introduction

In the suburban streets of Melbourne,

Austra-lia’s second largest city, a strange ritual plays

out around local government hard rubbish

(bulky waste) collections Residents seize the

opportunity to undertake major cleanouts of

sheds and spare rooms and cart out unwanted

goods and materials to the kerb-side in front of

their residence where they arrange them in neat

piles as directed by the brochure they received

in their mailbox Over the ensuing period

between notification of the scheduled collection

and the formal pickup, a succession of cars and

utility vehicles slowly cruise past the piles,

stopping now and then to collect selected items Sometimes whole trailer loads of col-lected materials may be seen departing from the scene Curious neighbours stroll past the piles

in their own street, souveniring items of interest and striking up impromptu conversations with neighbours they rarely communicate with at other times of year Stories abound about student share houses furnished primarily through scavenging hard rubbish By the time the council contractors arrive for the formal col-lection the piles are much smaller, although often somewhat less orderly The extent of these scavenging activities suggests that hard rubbish

operates effectively as an informal waste

commons

Despite the best efforts of waste management

authorities worldwide, the amount of waste

gen-erated in large cities around the world continues

to exceed the capacity to enclose it through

industrial recycling channels and increasing

quantities of waste materials are either landfilled

or incinerated This is in part due to the rapid

growth of urban populations since the mid 20th

century but also reflects the emergence of

globa-lised production systems that have reduced the

price of many consumer goods to such an extent

that it is both easier and, in many cases cheaper,

to discard and replace rather than repair and

maintain (Cooper, 2005; Jackson, 2006).1In

rela-tion to domestic waste, the increasing ‘churn

rate’ of goods through households has increased

the need for convenient disposal options

explain-ing the popularity of Melbourne’s hard rubbish

collections There have also been changes in the

types of materials that make up domestic waste,

with many items made up of composites of

dif-ferent materials that pose challenges for

indus-trial materials recycling

Official rhetoric of waste management in

Vic-toria suggests a paradigm shift is underway from

an earlier approach that treated waste as a hazard,

to both human and environmental health, to a

new approach that treats it as a resource Victoria

is not alone in this regard as waste management

in the developed world is now largely framed in

terms of an environmental management agenda

that emphasises materials recycling in line with

principles of ecological modernisation (Mol

and Spaagaren, 2000) Historically, government

approaches to the management of metropolitan

waste in Australian cities relied mainly on burial

in landfill sites and householders commonly used

back yard incinerators to supplement council

garbage collections Over time, waste disposal

has been increasingly regulated to reduce risks to

both human and environmental health Landfill

facilities have been relocated away from the city

along with the expanding urban periphery and,

since the 1990s, a range of new waste transfer

facilities have been developed in inner suburbs to

provide more convenient disposal options and

recovery of recyclable materials While

indivi-duals and commercial enterprises have always

engaged in forms of resource recovery,

govern-ment environgovern-mental rhetoric around recycling in

Victoria can be traced to the Environment

Pro-tection Act 1970 which makes explicit mention

of the ‘waste hierarchy’ as a guiding principle

(Gertsakis and Lewis, 2003) However, it is only since the 1990s that significant government resources have been directed towards resource recovery from municipal waste and there have been no initiatives to promote reduced consump-tion in line with the specificaconsump-tions of the waste hierarchy Amendments to the Act in 2002 and

2006 explicitly focus on reducing ecological impacts by improving resource efficiency and materials recovery (Environment Protection Authority Victoria, 2007)

Resource recovery by government waste man-agement agencies in Australia has primarily focused on facilitating large-scale materials recy-cling industries, so far concentrated on metals, paper, glass, and plastics The main role of gov-ernment agencies has been to provide an appro-priate collection system that effectively delivers those materials able to be recycled to relevant waste management industries For municipal waste this has generally been achieved through local governments providing dedicated kerb-side

‘recycling bins’ and collection services that are funded through council rates Australian cities have been particularly efficient in materials recy-cling, because of a combination of high levels

of public awareness of environmental benefits coupled with the convenience offered by a system of kerb-side domestic recycling bins with weekly scheduled collections (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006) Despite this success,

in Melbourne, where most of the research for this study was conducted, state government targets for the reduction of domestic waste to landfill are unlikely to be met without new initiatives that will counter the continuing upward trend which

is thought to be due to increasing population and,

to a lesser extent, increasing levels of affluence (Department of Sustainability and Environment, 2009) The environmental public good associated with such interventions is expressed through the terminology of ‘landfill diversion’ and their effectiveness is measured in terms of the portion

of the total domestic waste stream diverted from landfill (Victorian Government, 2005) This ter-minology captures the avoidance of environmen-tal hazard but not the reassignment of new resource value to the materials concerned Zsuzsa Gille has usefully coined the term

‘waste regimes’ to refer to a structure of rights, rules, and institutions that are designed to govern and regulate waste, both its production and dis-tribution, at a macrolevel (Gille, 2010, 1056) Drawing on Young’s concept of a resource regime in the management of natural resources

(Young, 1982), she uses the term to denote a

specific set of social institutions relevant to ‘the

production, circulation and transformation of

waste as a concrete material’ (Gille, 2010, 1056)

Institutions for waste management assign value

to waste materials They may be negatively

valued as environmental hazards as well as

posi-tively valued as potential resources with use or

exchange values The manner in which waste

is valued is an element in waste regimes and

various historical analyses have traced how

valuing of waste has changed over time in

specific country contexts along with changing

material needs (e.g need for metals during

wartime) and technological infrastructure for

collection and disposal (Strasser, 1999; Cooper,

2010) Gille (2010) applies this concept to the

management of industrial waste in Hungary

from 1948 to the present and her macro-analysis

focuses on the national scale, tracing transitions

through three regimes emphasising different

materials and industrial processes However, the

idea of regimes can also capture complex

transi-tions in municipal waste management

As with the governance of natural resources,

one might anticipate that property rights are an

important element in waste regimes, with

impli-cations for the framing of relationships between

people and resources and the negotiation of

power relations among resource users (Berkes

et al., 1989; Ostrom, 1990) The emergence of

what I term a ‘resource recovery waste regime’

coincides with the emergence of neoliberal

gov-ernance approaches that emphasise individual

responsibilities and enhanced roles for markets

in promoting public environmental benefits

(McCarthy and Prudham, 2004) It has generated

a new political context for the reassignment of

value from hazard to resource that justifies

gov-ernment facilitation of the transfer of property in

waste materials to industrial recyclers These

developments at a macroscale have affected

prac-tices at the microscale of the household,

includ-ing the provision and use of kerb-side recyclinclud-ing

bins and new roles for householders in

contrib-uting to the minimisation of waste as hazard and

generation of waste as resource (Chappells and

Shove, 1999)

Various studies pitched at the microscale

have traced the movement of objects through

dif-ferent regimes of value as they are discarded,

salvaged, remade, etc (Gregson and Crewe,

2003; Hawkins and Meucke, 2003; Gregson

and Beale, 2004; Hetherington, 2004; Hawkins,

2006; Gregson, 2007; Gregson et al., 2007;

Reno, 2009) However, scaling up the revaluing

of waste, according to Martin O’Brien, requires the development of a political economy that facilitates the creation of new values,

Industrial sectors exist because of the values that can be extruded from the exchange of those objects This is why what is waste today will not be waste tomorrow and why what was, common-sensically, waste yesterday is now incorporated as an economic ‘sector’ (O’Brien, 1999, 278)

O’Brien observes that processes of revaluing always reach beyond the formal waste manage-ment system and argues that this is why no regulatory system for waste management has ever achieved its stated goal of reducing or elimi-nating ‘useless waste’ (O’Brien, 2007) Multiple processes of creating value from waste keep materials in circulation through channels other than those established by waste management agencies If we accept this argument, it then becomes important to examine the activities of informal actors operating outside formal waste management systems and to explore broader social norms and institutions operating at

micro-as well micro-as macroscales that contribute to the revaluing of used goods and materials

Of particular value for understanding the diversity of pathways by which materials are revalued, is the framework developed by

Bulke-ley et al (2007) for understanding ‘modes of

governing’ municipal waste Drawing on recent theorising on governance and governmentality, they focus on structures and processes of govern-ing in order to recognise the plurality and multi-plicity of sites and activities of governing In this analysis, institutional relations and technologies are shown to coalesce around specific objectives and entities to be governed which are described

as ‘rationalities’ For example, ‘landfill diversion mode’ is one rationality that is primarily associ-ated with government actors, while ‘waste as resource’ is another rationality associated with a much wider range of actors and a wider range of

revaluing processes (Bulkeley et al., 2007)

Con-nections can potentially be drawn between activi-ties operating at multiple scales through common governing rationalities In contrast with Gille’s waste regimes approach, the modes of governing approach emphasises these cross-scale connec-tions as a potential source of change Regardless

of the actors or systems involved, revaluing pro-cesses have quite tangible dimensions and may

be accompanied by transformations in the

mate-rials themselves Various pathways of revaluing

entail physical and spatial transitions and the

residues from one transformative process may

generate new forms of waste elsewhere (Gregson

and Crang, 2010) Further, some materials are

more readily transformed through industrial

recycling processes than others and these

quali-ties are also of consequence

In this paper, I focus specifically on the issue of

property in hard rubbish I set this in the context

of an emerging resource recovery waste regime

and consider how property rights are understood

in both formal and informal institutions involved

in reprocessing these materials The desired

tran-sition in value from waste as hazard or nuisance

to waste as resource requires a parallel transition

in ownership While consideration has been given

to the technical systems and governance

arrange-ments needed to support this transition (Darier,

1996; Bulkeley et al., 2005; 2007; Davoudi,

2006; 2009; Davies, 2008; Watson et al., 2008;

Watson and Lane, 2011), little attention has so far

been paid to the transfer of property.2 Neither

Gille’s ‘waste regimes’ approach nor Bulkeley

et al.’s ‘modes of governing’ approach address

the issue of property overtly I argue that

Mel-bourne’s hard rubbish collections form a kind of

informal waste commons where discarded goods

and materials are relinquished by their owners

into the public space of the kerb-side for a brief

period of time The kerb-side or ‘nature strip’,

where the transition in ownership takes place, is a

critical locus for the categorisation of private

property more generally, as Nick Blomley has

shown in his work on gardening infringements in

Vancouver (Blomley, 2004) It forms a boundary

between public space formally managed by local

government authorities and the private space of

the domestic residence, although this boundary

can be challenged through informal activities of

residents (Blomley, 2004; 2005) The

commer-cialisation of kerb-side waste collection through

contracting arrangements further complicates

matters

In neoliberal approaches to environmental

policy an alliance often exists between a market

instruments paradigm that seeks to delineate

new forms of private property in environmental

resources and an environmental citizenship

para-digm where individual citizen consumers are

assumed to carry certain responsibilities for the

maintenance of environmental public goods such

as clean air, healthy river catchments,

biodiver-sity and so on (McCarthy and Prudham, 2004;

Barry, 2006; Lane et al., 2008) Becky Mansfield

observes that it is not unusual for environmental policy to have multiple and sometimes contradic-tory agendas (Mansfield, 2009) This seems to be particularly the case when markets are impli-cated for the implementation of policies to promote environmental public goods Given that the revaluing of waste as resource leads to new markets one might expect to find a similar con-tradictory mix in understandings of property in waste management policy where the public good

of hazard reduction is deliberately coupled with the generation of new commodities with market value

I begin by describing hard rubbish collections

in the context of government waste management and resource recovery initiatives in Melbourne I then consider the range of options available to householders seeking to dispose of unwanted goods and materials, and argue that hard rubbish collections form one of the few waste commons currently in existence in Melbourne A brief summary is then provided of the results of empirical research involving a residents’ survey

of scavenging of their own hard rubbish piles that indicates the quantity and type of materials most likely to be scavenged To identify different per-spectives on property rights and governance arrangements in hard rubbish I then draw on a set

of interviews with residents, waste management contractors and two self-identified ‘professional’ scavengers Finally, based on these various lines

of evidence, I tease out tentative conclusions about the role of the waste commons in the context of a transition towards a resource recov-ery waste regime

Hard rubbish collections in Melbourne

Most of the 31 metropolitan councils in Mel-bourne provide an annual or biannual collection

of ‘hard rubbish’ in addition to weekly kerb-side collections of recyclable materials through bins The state government agency, Sustainability Victoria, supported by the Metropolitan Waste Management Group, provides model contracts for these collections that local governments can modify to suit their specific needs Residents are advised of a scheduled hard rubbish collection through a leaflet in their mail box which invites them to place up to one cubic metre of unwanted materials on the kerb-side in front of their resi-dence, with guidelines provided about specific materials that will not be collected (such as asbestos) because of their hazardous nature for health and safety Council waste management contractors then collect the materials, usually

sending one truck in advance to pick up

recy-clable items, especially metals, and a second

compactor truck to collect the remaining

materi-als which are transported to landfill Official

figures provided for council hard rubbish

collec-tions indicate a landfill diversion rate of only

13% of all hard rubbish for Metropolitan

Mel-bourne (Department of Sustainability and

Envi-ronment, 2009) so these collections are not

considered particularly effective for the purpose

of resource recovery There is no

acknowledge-ment of scavenging as a channel for either reuse

or diversion of hard rubbish from landfill, and

scavenging is only mentioned as a problem for

local governments to manage The Metropolitan

Waste and Resource Recovery Strategic Plan

(Department of Sustainability and Environment,

2009) anticipates future changes to improve

resource recovery from hard rubbish will be

driven by enhanced product stewardship

pro-grammes as well as concerns about health and

safety issues In particular it notes that, ‘Future

contractual arrangements may need to include

requirements for the practical recovery of

“product stewardship recoverable items” to

maximise resource recovery from hard waste

services’ (Department of Sustainability and

Environment, 2009, 39) In Australia, product

stewardship is based on voluntary agreements

between government and manufacturers for

recy-cling of specific products, especially those

clas-sified as ‘Ewaste’ (Lane et al., unpublished data;

Environment Protection and Heritage Council,

2011)

While householders have embraced the system

of hard rubbish collections, which is particularly

convenient for the disposal of bulky items, they

have a range of other options for disposing of

unwanted goods and materials (Lane et al., 2009;

Watson and Lane, 2011) They may drive their

waste to their nearest waste transfer station

where they pay a fee for dumping They may

donate items to a charity through a door-to-door

collection, a dedicated ‘charity bin’ or by

drop-ping them off at a local charity retail store

Garage sales held at the residence provide

another outlet for disposing of a range of

unwanted goods They may use online trading

sites such as EBay™ to find buyers for their

goods or they may use the Freecycle moderated

email list to advertise items they wish to give

away It is instructive to consider these various

disposal channels in terms of the transfer of

property At the waste transfer station,

house-holders pay a fee for the right to dispose

of unwanted property Donations to charities involve bequeathing property to a new owner who may then give or sell it to another party Garage sales involve direct purchase of property which then passes from one private owner to another The Melbourne Freecycle group pro-vides a loose governance structure and commu-nication forum to facilitate gifting of goods from one owner within what might be described

as a restricted access commons among an online community of subscribers However, hard rubbish collections appear to function effectively

as a more informal commons for the period that materials remain on the nature strip Goods and materials scavenged from hard rubbish re-enter a private property regime where they may acquire either new use value or exchange value as com-modities for resale The remaining unscavenged materials become the property of the waste man-agement contractor at the time of collection Scavenging of hard rubbish generates both public interest and concern A review I conducted

of local newspaper reporting of scavenging activities showed an even mix of reports in favour and critical of scavenging A survey con-ducted in 2007, primarily in the suburb of Frank-ston in Melbourne’s south-east, an area with a relatively low socio-economic profile, found that over 40% of respondents had acquired items from hard rubbish over the last two years Home-based parents of young children were the most prominent socio-demographic group involved in these activities and furniture formed the most sought after items However, scavenging is also a concern for many Melbourne councils and some have enacted a by-law prohibiting it with fines for transgression In some cases a flashing road sign is erected in areas where collections are underway to convey the message ‘Scavenging is Illegal’ However, such laws are difficult to enforce and most councils lack the capacity to do

so These measures are partly in response to resi-dents’ complaints about the mess left by scaven-gers An officer of one council showed me a file

of resident’s complaints used to justify council policy However, they may also be a response to representations from waste management contrac-tors who lose potential income from scrap metal Some councils have switched to an ‘at-call’ or

‘booked’ hard waste collection, paid for partly by the council and partly by the resident, as a strat-egy to deter scavenging

In order to further explore these points of tension around scavenging of hard rubbish, I enlisted 69 householders to monitor what

hap-pened to their hard rubbish piles between setting

them out and the formal council collection

Given that scavenging could take place at any

time between residents placing items out on

the kerb-side and the arrival of the council

contractor, the only way to gain a relatively

accurate measure of what materials were

actu-ally removed by scavengers was to enlist the

assistance of those who put the materials out in

the first place The 69 residents were provided

with survey forms that included a list of

differ-ent categories of items, space for the responddiffer-ent

to note how many of each type of item they set

out, space for them to note if and when it had

been removed prior to the formal collection, and

space for additional comments The information

gathered provided details about the extent of

scavenging and the types of goods most likely to

be scavenged To gain a cross section of

per-spectives on property and value in hard rubbish,

I conducted three interviews with waste

man-agement contractors responsible for kerb-side

collections in Melbourne,3 six interviews with

Melbourne householders and a further interview

with two self-identified ‘professional

scaven-gers’ working in Sutherland Shire in Sydney

where scheduled hard rubbish collections are

conducted by local government contractors,

similar to those in Melbourne The term

‘profes-sional’ signals that they derive significant

income from scavenging and approach it in a

systematic way, unlike householders who may

simply scavenge items in their own

neighbour-hood on a casual and not-for-profit basis In

analysing this material, I particularly focused on

tensions between waste managers, scavengers,

and householders

Results and discussion

The survey by householders who observed

scav-enging of their own hard rubbish piles showed

that of a total of 546 items set out for the

collec-tion 35% were scavenged prior to the council

collection This finding indicates that the overall

percentage of materials reclaimed from hard

rubbish is much higher than the official 13% in

official data provided by contractors Based on

these figures, informal scavenging appears to be

far more significant in achieving government

policy goals of diversion from landfill than is

recycling by the waste management contractors

who collect hard rubbish

The other key finding was that scavengers

recycle a much wider range of materials than do

contractors, who only recycled metal items for

scrap The survey results also showed that some types of goods were more likely to be scavenged than others The ten most common items set out were furniture (105), electrical appliances (100), packaging (43), garden equipment (42), com-puter equipment (35), toys (28), miscellaneous metal (25), miscellaneous timber (23), and white goods (18) The percentage of items scavenged compared with items set out in each category (where the number of itemsⱖ15) revealed that the items most likely to be scavenged were: white goods (72%), sports equipment (60%), furniture and electrical goods (46% each), children’s toys and computer equipment (43% each), and mis-cellaneous metal (40%) (see Figure 1)

While scavengers may have sold items to materials recyclers rather than passed them into reuse channels, this was more likely to be the case for metal items because of the unusually high prices for scrap at the time of this survey

It seems more likely that furniture removed

by scavengers (generally made of wood) was reused, either immediately by those who removed it, or via a more mediated channel involving resale This conclusion is supported by the earlier survey of Melbourne householders that indicated a strong interest in salvaging fur-niture from hard rubbish

Householder perspectives

Of the six householders interviewed, five described acquiring as well as disposing of things through hard rubbish and three had acquired furniture this way The practice of placing items on the nature strip outside of formal collections seemed to be widespread and was considered a community spirited thing to participate in For example, one householder explained that although there was no council col-lection in her suburb, her family and other resi-dents still disposed of things by putting them on the nature strip, sometimes with a sign saying

‘Free’ Her family had also acquired items of furniture and children’s toys this way Another interviewee, a widowed retiree who lived alone, described the scavenging activities that he and others engaged in within his street as a deliberate gifting of discarded materials that contributed to communal sociability Some of the householders interviewed were unsure if the practice was legal but condoned it regardless The nature strip outside suburban residences was clearly under-stood by these residents as a useful site for both the divestment and acquisition of property and hard rubbish as a commons operating at the

community scale While the existence of council

hard rubbish collections may have been

impor-tant in initiating such practices, in some suburbs

they appeared to have attained the status of a

social norm or informal institution that endured

regardless of formal collections

The use of hard rubbish collections often

over-lapped with the use of other second-hand

chan-nels for disposal such as gifting within networks

of family and friends, donations to charities, or

the use of garage sales or online trading The

choice of which channel to use for disposing of

particular items was often carefully considered

taking into account both potential market value

and the potential for the reuse value to be

com-promised by rain or vandalism The two

house-holders with young children spoke of their

reluctance to sell unwanted items, especially

children’s things, as they had been the recipients

of many gifts and felt they should carry on this practice themselves The sense of mutual obliga-tion around giving and receiving clearly contrib-uted to perpetuation of these practices From this perspective the waste commons provided by hard rubbish was linked with practices of giving and receiving gifts, and the idea of communal ben-efits, rather than the acquisition of private prop-erty for personal gain It was difficult to tease out motivations for scavenging based on conve-nience and economic benefit, which were clearly significant for those with young families, from the community spirit explanations that inter-viewees emphasised

Objects acquired through scavenging by house-holders interviewed were primarily obtained for use value rather than exchange value However, goods acquired frequently needed repairs or modifications before they could be used and this

required appropriate spaces in the home,

equip-ment such as sewing machines and carpentry tools

and the time and skills to use them So the capacity

to realise use values was contingent on space,

time, and labour

Contractors’ perspectives

At the time of the study, WM Waste Management

was the most prominent contracting business

involved in hard rubbish collections in

Mel-bourne, servicing approximately one third of all

local council areas The company also managed a

waste transfer station which contained facilities

for sorting recyclable materials and a tip shop

where salvaged objects were on sale, although

this operation was largely independent of the

hard rubbish collections Contracts for hard

rubbish varied among councils with some

includ-ing additional requirements for separatinclud-ing out

specific recyclable items such as mattresses One

truck was dispatched first to collect scrap metal

and, where required, other trucks for specified

recyclables The remaining material was then

collected in a compactor truck and taken directly

to landfill

The project manager interviewed, explained

that the main economic value was in the contract

to collect signed with each council It was

impor-tant that this allowed a viable profit margin

regardless of any additional income from

recy-cling He then elaborated on the financial

incen-tives for separate collections of recyclable

materials Contracts usually required a level of

recycling but there were additional incentives

based on profits and costs associated with

spe-cific materials Metal was the most valuable

com-ponent of hard rubbish as contractors extracted

additional income from sales to scrap metal

dealers The main drivers for salvaging other

materials were all costs, including transport costs

associated with the removal of landfill sites to the

outer perimeter of Melbourne, and a rising

land-fill levy Items such as mattresses were

particu-larly expensive to deposit in landfill and it was

cheaper to collect them separately and take them

to recyclers The project manager reflected that

the amount and composition of hard rubbish had

increased over the last 10 years and there were

more items of large domestic equipment such as

white goods and electronic equipment This was

evidenced by an increase in the number of

col-lections his company had undertaken over time

and the number of trucks required While there

were differences between wealthy and poorer

suburbs in terms of the type and quality of goods

discarded, the greatest differences were between new suburbs, that generated little more than packaging waste because residents were still set-tling in, and more established suburbs, where more waste was thrown out and large items such

as refrigerators were more common He also speculated that increasing quantities of hard rubbish were a reflection on the difficulties for residents to access landfills due to greater distances to landfill sites, lack of appropriate vehicles, and an aging population

All the contractors interviewed commented

on a recent increase in scavenging activities that they associated with the rising price for scrap metal This had reached a peak around the time

of the interviews, conducted between May 2007 and April 2008, then dropped towards the end of

2008 (London Metal Exchange, 2009) One man who had been involved in waste management for over 30 years considered that the nature of scav-enging and the people involved in these activities had changed over time from a more ad hoc amateur approach to a more organised and even

‘professional’ approach that competed directly with contractors for the exchange value of scrap metal

I think there’s always been scavenging of like bookshelves or bikes or that sort of stuff, lawn mowers and things We’re not really bothered

by that You know if it’s just the local people just swapping stuff around – it doesn’t really worry us The only really consensus is that people taking scrap metal – they’re the ones that frustrate us

One manager expressed his wish that more councils would legislate against scavenging as he thought this would allow a clear and enforceable assignment of property rights to contractors Some councils using ‘at-call’ collections had asked residents to leave their pile inside the front fence as a strategy for reducing scavenging However, there had been incidents of misunder-standings about which items were for collection and contractors consequently preferred to con-tinue collecting from the public space of the nature strip

During collections contractors frequently dis-turbed scavengers at work provoking mixed reac-tions which on occasion became violent While most scavengers quickly left the scene, some tried to negotiate for specific items and others asserted a right to take items and became aggres-sive In most council areas, contractors had no legal capacity to apprehend scavengers so were

restricted to verbal warnings However, the

con-tractors related an anecdote from an area where

the council had legislated against scavenging, in

which they had gone to the house of a known

scavenger and loaded his accumulated piles of

scrap metal into the back of their truck

The contractors also related numerous

interac-tions with residents who were expecting that

their hard rubbish would be reused or recycled

and were both surprised and dismayed to learn

that most of it was to go to landfill While the

contractors felt there was a great deal more

potential for salvaging goods for charity

logisti-cal challenges prevented this Opportunities for

reuse of electrical appliances were lost when

cords were cut off Sometimes this was done by

residents on council advice in order to avoid

potential hazards from switching on a faulty

appliance Sometimes it was done by scavengers

collecting copper wire for its value as scrap

Con-tractors also expressed concern that some

reus-able items were scavenged by collectors who

then sold them for personal profit, and

opportu-nities were consequently missed for capturing

this potential exchange value for a more public

benefit

Waste management contractors discursively

frame hard rubbish collections as a service to the

community and materials recycling as a public

environmental good However, they understand

the waste commons of hard rubbish as an

ineffi-cient open access regime in need of regulation,

preferably to enclose it within a private property

regime administered by the

government/cor-porate waste management system Payments

for collection contracts underpin their business

but their profits could be greater if their right to

collect could be made exclusive While aware

of potential use values and potential exchange

values in a range of materials, and of a public

benefit in reuse and recycling activities more

generally, their own activities were constrained

by economic considerations and their primary

interest in resource recovery was based on the

exchange value of scrap metal However, their

legitimate government-sanctioned appropriation

of metals in hard rubbish was challenged by what

they considered illegitimate appropriations by

professional scavengers for individual economic

gain

‘Professional’ scavenger perspectives

Because of the uncertain legal status of

profes-sional scavenging, it was difficult to trace

indi-viduals willing to be interviewed Through social

networks, two ‘professional’ scavengers working together in the Sutherland Shire in the south of Sydney were identified who agreed to be inter-viewed A similar hard rubbish collection system operated in this area to those in Melbourne The senior partner, a woman in her late 50s who I will call ‘Alice’, was keenly aware of the status of hard rubbish as relinquished property in public space as she had relied on this resource for her livelihood for over 20 years Her business partner, a man in his late 20s who I will call

‘Ben’, had moved to Sydney from a country town several years earlier when he found he could earn

a living by scavenging in the city Alice was annoyed at the unrealistic assumptions made by councils about their capacity to allocate property rights in the contracts they drew up with waste management companies At the time the price of scrap metal was reaching a peak in 2007, Suth-erland Shire advertised a contract for a scrap metal processing business to buy the metal com-ponent of the hard rubbish collected by their contractor She explained that a contract was eventually developed that gave the waste man-agement contractor rights to the proceeds from sale of scrap metal in return for assuming the costs of land filling the rest However, scavengers ensured that there was no metal to sell and the contractor lost money

Alice explained that laws against scavenging had been enacted in Sutherland Shire specifying that only registered parties who possessed their own scrap metal facilities could legally collect hard rubbish, ruling out most informal scaven-gers However, according to her, these laws had made no difference to the activities of scavengers despite some fines being issued The spike in the price of scrap metal had resulted in an influx of

‘professional’ scavengers in her area, including some from rural areas outside Sydney, and there had been incidents of aggression as they com-peted with one another for the resource She observed that many of these new entrants were otherwise unemployed and assumed they used the income to supplement unemployment ben-efits In principle, she favoured a licensing system for scavenging which would formally recognise it as an industry and offered some regulation of standards of practice, especially in regard to occupational health and safety Among the long-term ‘professional’ scavengers she inter-acted with, she thought the great majority would also prefer to be licensed provided the cost was not prohibitive Alice had recently been elected

to a council rubbish committee where she

struggled to achieve recognition for the work of

scavengers In her view a mechanism was needed

for a dialogue between scavengers, the council,

and local residents who she thought should also

have a say in what happened to their rubbish

These ‘professional’ scavengers’ description

of their activities highlighted the skills and

knowledge needed for capturing exchange value

for a wide range of discarded goods and

materi-als, the networks of second-hand auctions and

dealers and the logistical challenges involved

Over time, Alice had acquired considerable

knowledge of the range of channels available for

selling second-hand goods around Sydney and

differentiated herself from other scavengers who

were only interested in scrap metal She placed

great value on maintaining both historical and

reuse values and was particularly dismayed when

objects with potential reuse value were lost

through bulk processing either for energy

pro-duction (through incineration) or bulk composite

materials such as wallboard However, a key

challenge for realising potential exchange value

was the need for suitable storage space Alice

and Ben restricted themselves to a relatively

small storage capacity as a strategy for limiting

expense overheads and, as a consequence,

main-tained a constant flow of goods and materials

From the perspective of these ‘professional’

scavengers, hard rubbish is a common pool

resource in need of government regulation to

create a restricted access system with equitable

allocation of resources Unlike the contractors

who wanted to enclose the commons as private

property and exclude scavengers, they thought a

realistic approach to regulation would

incorpo-rate scavengers as part of the waste management

system by licensing those who complied with a

code of conduct to work in designated

geographi-cal areas

Conclusion: the role of the waste commons

in a resource recovery waste regime

Hard rubbish collections highlight a number

of challenges and dilemmas for the desired

transition to a resource recovery waste regime

within formal waste management policy and

practice The tensions between waste managers,

scavengers, and residents around domestic hard

rubbish, and their differing perspectives on

prop-erty rights, offer useful insights into the messy

and contested aspects of revaluing domestic

waste and also food for thought about the role

property rights play in waste regimes more

gen-erally Property in municipal waste is a social

relation that must be enacted at the microscale in order for it to be meaningful at the macroscale where waste management policy is framed The perspectives of both householders and profes-sional scavengers show that hard rubbish collec-tions function as an informal waste commons linked with social institutions and norms around gifting and gleaning

Neither scavenging by residents for use value nor by professionals for exchange value has been formally acknowledged in waste management policy, yet both potentially contribute to the broader objectives of waste management policy and are consequently significant to an emerging resource recovery waste regime The evidence presented here suggests that informal activities are currently more effective in revaluing waste

as resource than are formal collection systems although this cannot be confirmed without more information on the ultimate fate of scavenged goods and materials When scavenging is taken into account, hard rubbish appears to facilitate revaluing of a much wider range of waste mate-rials, suggesting that its common property status

is important for capturing diverse resource values

at the microscale Regardless of these apparent benefits the status of hard rubbish as a waste commons is considered problematic by waste management contractors and some local govern-ments seek to enclose this commons within the formal waste management system by enacting laws to prohibit scavenging These measures inevitably fail because of the inability to secure exclusive property rights to materials on the kerb-side in any practical way On the one hand, professional scavengers assert equivalent rights

to collect hard rubbish for its exchange value

to that of council contractors On the other hand, residents who support or engage in scavenging assert community benefits associated with use value of waste materials and may perpetuate an informal waste commons institution indepen-dently of formal council collection services Rather than a problem, the tension between the commons and the commodity in hard rubbish may be a productive one for progressing towards

a resource recovery waste regime The plethora

of small-scale actors involved in scavenging hard rubbish for different kinds of value seems indica-tive of a situation that is highly dynamic with the potential for further significant change The fact that most of the material collected by contractors goes to landfill appears to diminish the moral justification of property claims of contractors over scavengers in a resource recovery waste