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

The Waste Commons in an Emerging Resource Recovery Waste Regime: Contesting Property and Value in Melbourne’s Hard Rubbish Collections geor_704 395 407 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 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, Australia’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, Geographical Research • November 2011 • 49(4):395–407 doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2011.00704.x stopping now and then to collect selected items Sometimes whole trailer loads of collected 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 collection the piles are much smaller, although often somewhat less orderly The extent of these scavenging activities suggests that hard rubbish 395 396 Geographical Research • November 2011 • 49(4):395–407 operates effectively as an informal waste commons Despite the best efforts of waste management authorities worldwide, the amount of waste generated 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 globalised 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).1 In relation to domestic waste, the increasing ‘churn rate’ of goods through households has increased the need for convenient disposal options explaining 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 different materials that pose challenges for industrial materials recycling Official rhetoric of waste management in Victoria 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 individuals and commercial enterprises have always engaged in forms of resource recovery, government environmental rhetoric around recycling in Victoria can be traced to the Environment Protection 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 consumption in line with the specifications 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 management agencies in Australia has primarily focused on facilitating large-scale materials recycling industries, so far concentrated on metals, paper, glass, and plastics The main role of government agencies has been to provide an appropriate 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 recycling, 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 terminology captures the avoidance of environmental 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 distribution, at a macrolevel (Gille, 2010, 1056) Drawing on Young’s concept of a resource regime in the management of natural resources © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 397 R Lane: Waste Commons (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 positively 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 transitions 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 implications 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 governance 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 government facilitation of the transfer of property in waste materials to industrial recyclers These developments at a macroscale have affected practices at the microscale of the household, including the provision and use of kerb-side recycling bins and new roles for householders in contributing 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 different 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 management system and argues that this is why no regulatory system for waste management has ever achieved its stated goal of reducing or eliminating ‘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 microas well 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 Bulkeley 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 governing in order to recognise the plurality and multiplicity 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 associated 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) Connections can potentially be drawn between activities 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 connections as a potential source of change Regardless of the actors or systems involved, revaluing processes have quite tangible dimensions and may be accompanied by transformations in the mate- © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 398 Geographical Research • November 2011 • 49(4):395–407 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 qualities 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 transition 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 arrangements 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 Melbourne’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 commercialisation 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 paradigm where individual citizen consumers are assumed to carry certain responsibilities for the maintenance of environmental public goods such as clean air, healthy river catchments, biodiversity 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 contradictory agendas (Mansfield, 2009) This seems to be particularly the case when markets are implicated 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 contradictory 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 perspectives 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 recovery waste regime Hard rubbish collections in Melbourne Most of the 31 metropolitan councils in Melbourne 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 residence, 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 © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 399 R Lane: Waste Commons sending one truck in advance to pick up recyclable items, especially metals, and a second compactor truck to collect the remaining materials which are transported to landfill Official figures provided for council hard rubbish collections indicate a landfill diversion rate of only 13% of all hard rubbish for Metropolitan Melbourne (Department of Sustainability and Environment, 2009) so these collections are not considered particularly effective for the purpose of resource recovery There is no acknowledgement 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 programmes 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 recycling of specific products, especially those classified 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 dropping 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, householders 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 provides a loose governance structure and communication 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 commodities for resale The remaining unscavenged materials become the property of the waste management 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 conducted in 2007, primarily in the suburb of Frankston 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 Homebased 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 so These measures are partly in response to residents’ complaints about the mess left by scavengers 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 contractors 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 strategy 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- © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 400 Geographical Research • November 2011 • 49(4):395–407 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 actually 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 different categories of items, space for the respondent 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 perspectives on property and value in hard rubbish, I conducted three interviews with waste management contractors responsible for kerb-side collections in Melbourne,3 six interviews with Melbourne householders and a further interview with two self-identified ‘professional scavengers’ working in Sutherland Shire in Sydney where scheduled hard rubbish collections are conducted by local government contractors, similar to those in Melbourne The term ‘professional’ 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 neighbourhood 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 scavenging of their own hard rubbish piles showed that of a total of 546 items set out for the collection 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 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), computer 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 items Ն15) 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 miscellaneous 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 furniture 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 collection in her suburb, her family and other residents 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 understood by these residents as a useful site for both the divestment and acquisition of property and hard rubbish as a commons operating at the © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 401 R Lane: Waste Commons Figure Summary of residents’ observations of scavenging for different categories of discarded objects community scale While the existence of council hard rubbish collections may have been important 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 overlapped with the use of other second-hand channels 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 compromised by rain or vandalism The two householders 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 obligation around giving and receiving clearly contributed 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 benefits, rather than the acquisition of private property for personal gain It was difficult to tease out motivations for scavenging based on convenience and economic benefit, which were clearly significant for those with young families, from the community spirit explanations that interviewees emphasised Objects acquired through scavenging by householders 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 © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 402 Geographical Research • November 2011 • 49(4):395–407 required appropriate spaces in the home, equipment 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 Melbourne, 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 including additional requirements for separating 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 important that this allowed a viable profit margin regardless of any additional income from recycling He then elaborated on the financial incentives 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 specific materials Metal was the most valuable component 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 landfill levy Items such as mattresses were particularly 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 collections 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 settling 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 scavenging 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 misunderstandings about which items were for collection and contractors consequently preferred to continue collecting from the public space of the nature strip During collections contractors frequently disturbed scavengers at work provoking mixed reactions 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 aggressive In most council areas, contractors had no legal capacity to apprehend scavengers so were © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 403 R Lane: Waste Commons restricted to verbal warnings However, the contractors 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 interactions 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 logistical 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 Contractors also expressed concern that some reusable items were scavenged by collectors who then sold them for personal profit, and opportunities 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 inefficient open access regime in need of regulation, preferably to enclose it within a private property regime administered by the government/corporate 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 professional scavenging, it was difficult to trace individuals 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 interviewed 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, Sutherland Shire advertised a contract for a scrap metal processing business to buy the metal component of the hard rubbish collected by their contractor She explained that a contract was eventually developed that gave the waste management 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 scavengers 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 competed 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 benefits 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 interacted 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 © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 404 Geographical Research • November 2011 • 49(4):395–407 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 materials, 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 production (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, maintained 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 incorporate scavengers as part of the waste management system by licensing those who complied with a code of conduct to work in designated geographical 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 property 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 generally 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 professional scavengers show that hard rubbish collections 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 materials, 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 governments 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 independently 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 indicative 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 © 2011 The Author Geographical Research © 2011 Institute of Australian Geographers 405 R Lane: Waste Commons regime that presents large-scale materials recycling as the best solution to reducing the public environmental hazard of waste in landfill However, although large-scale industrial recycling appears to lag behind the capacity of smallscale actors for comprehensive waste recycling, it is clearly needed to achieve the significant material transformations required for an emerging recycled materials economy in line with the ecological modernisation emphasis in waste management policy New formal collection systems associated with the introduction of product stewardship schemes for specific goods are likely to enclose more components of the domestic waste stream as private property, but the diverse nature of the materials themselves is likely to work against ever capturing the whole domestic waste stream within formal waste management systems For the reasons noted by O’Brien (1999) earlier, it seems probable that there will always be some materials unable to be recycled but that this will change over time Given these considerations there is consequently a strong case for preserving the waste commons in some form Options for co-management (Carlsson and Berkes, 2005) of hard rubbish as a restricted access common property regime might be explored where local social institutions around revaluing would be recognised and ‘professional’ scavengers allocated prescribed rights While Gille uses the idea of a waste regime to argue the need for macrolevel theorising to better understand the evolution of social institutions around waste management (Gille, 2010), this study of hard rubbish collections shows that waste regimes, at least in relation to metropolitan waste, require active participation by a wide range of actors operating at the scale of households, streets and neighbourhoods and are also affected by global processes The neoliberal emphasis in waste management policy assumes that economic values in recycled materials will be captured by emerging recycling industries and informal scavenging, if acknowledged at all, is seen as detrimental to this However, the conflicts over scrap metal recorded in this study show a convergence around a resource recovery governing rational (Bulkeley et al., 2007) among contractors and small-scale professional scavengers that could potentially expand to other recyclable materials as new markets evolve This aspect of revaluing links activities on Melbourne’s kerbsides with global markets as the profitability and livelihoods to be made out of recycling discarded materials from Melbourne’s kerb-sides are linked to increased consumption and demand for resources worldwide There are perhaps parallels here with the tension between top-down and bottom-up approaches in the study of natural resource management (Berkes, 2002; Young, 2002) The conclusions presented here are only tentative as my focus on hard rubbish collections necessarily emphasised the local scale and only hinted at a bigger picture To understand the extent to which the macrolevel waste regime connects with revaluing processes operating at the local scale will require broader based but carefully targeted research that engages in depth with the political economies that influence revaluing processes at various scales ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work forms part of a larger research project on the reuse of second hand household goods that involves collaborations with Ralph Horne, Director of the Centre for Design at RMIT University, and Matt Watson, Lecturer in Geography at the University of Sheffield I am very grateful for their insightful comments on drafts The interviews with householders were conducted jointly with Ralph Horne and my analysis is informed by our subsequent discussions around this material I would also like to thank the participants at a workshop on ‘Geographies of Reuse’ held at the University of Sheffield in November, 2009 for a rich and stimulating discussion that helped to hone the conceptual framing of this paper This workshop was funded through a British Academy ACU Grant held jointly with Matt Watson, titled ‘Geographies of Reuse’ NOTES See also Jackson (2004) for an analysis of the contribution of local consumption cultures in the context of globalised production systems Tensions around property in waste have been explored at a global scale by Josh Lepawsky who examines international E-Waste legislation in terms of law–space relations (Lepawsky and McNabb, 2010) He argues that attempts to regulate the scavenging of waste materials have resulted in the enclosure of property in these resources for large corporations and the consequent disenfranchisement of groups of people whose livelihoods depend on small-scale scavenging operations Other work conducted in developing world contexts has focused on organisations of waste pickers who negotiate rights to scavenge (Gutberlet, 2008; Whitson, 2011) One of the three interviews with waste management contractors was conducted as a focus group with four employees directly 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Sydney, and there had been incidents of aggression as they competed with one another for the resource She observed that many of these new entrants were otherwise unemployed and assumed they used the