DEGROWTH, TO PUT IT SHORT

Column By Paolo Cacciari

Degrowth, however defined (peaceful, happy, voluntary…), is an easily misconceived, controversial concept. The International Meeting's purpouse will be to give some fulfilling answers. In the meantime, this website will try to explain it by means of a comprehensible language, As if talking to our sons, daughters, and nephews.

  Everybody is a street sweeper!   It takes a little environmental knowledge. The best one is taught and learnt at home thanks to the big game called “separate collection of rubbish”.   In nature rubbish does not and cannot exist. If nothing is created or destroyed, then this means that everything is processed. Trash is made up of objects and food that have been rejected because we do not want or are not able to use any longer. But their material essence does not stop being there. Apparently the english term “waste” comes from the latin word “vastus” and has the same etymology as “devastate”^.

So, performing a separate collection of rubbish (that is subdividing garbage into lots depending on composition to help reciclying and re-utilization) is an act of love, support and rapprochement with the work done silently and for free by the natural life cycles. It is also an act of kindness, unselfishness, collaboration with the other human beings that we do not want to subject to our pollution, contamination, and volition.   We have made use of mother nature's gifts (ecosystem services, as they are called by those who opt for a more scientific language), mined the subsoil for mineral resources, picked fruits from the trees, pumped water from the rivers. Yet, inevitably, a moment comes when we must give them back. As has been said by someone, rubbish is autobiographical: it makes us search our own soul and think about the effects of our behaviour. Anthropologists do what is called “trashing”: they search rubbish to gather data and information on people's life style. Apparently, in this way it is possible to get a deeper knowledge about human societies and their level of civilization. This isn't always uplifting. Think about this: in Italy 30% of fresh food is thrown away. The same happens to 19% of bread and 17% of fruit and vegetables. Great Britain seems to fare even worse: 40% of food is thrown away. Pre-cooked and packaged food expires and is thrown away more rapidly than the rest.   It looks like that plenty must go hand in hand with waste. George Batailles said that “the ultimate power is the freedom to waste”. Although it is an unjust and unsustainable freedom. Perhaps this is why we like so much dustbin liners, skips, compressing rubbish trucks provided with a hook and a camera, waste-to-energy plants. Setting it all on fire is easier. Waste disposal structures (like the sewage system) are facilities that help us to get rid quickly of our consumerist excesses.   A separate collection of household waste (compost heap, paper, coloured glass, clear glass, plastic, cans, non-recyclable trash) is the opposite of the fire inside an incinerator. It is a thanksgiving rite to show gratitude for the chance of having so much abundance of goods (everyday we throw away one kilo of various materials).   Gandhi wrote that “everybody must collect their own trash… every family should take care of their waste. For years I have thought that there must be something radically wrong in any situation in which rubbish has been turned into an occupation for a specialized part of society… We all should have clear in our minds since childhood the concept that we are all street sweepers”^.   During his election campaign Obama, too, promised a “reduction in quantity and toxicity of the waste that we produce. Reusing packagings and products. Fixing something broken or giving it to someone who can do it. Recycling as much as possible and buying goods made with recycled materials. It is my opinion that, as a nation, we must enforce federal laws with a clear deadline that make States recycle plastic, aluminum, paper, etc., setting a step by step task to reach the goal of zero rubbish. Let's go! All animals except man do it every day. Don't we think we are the most advanced species?”^.