Waste — the machine vs the garden

In his wonderful book “Finite and Infinite Games”, James Carse describes two analogies we have for nature. The first is as machine, the second is as garden.

To quote:

“The alternative attitudes toward nature can be characterized in a rough way by saying that the result of approaching nature as a hostile Other whose designs are basically inimical to our interests is the machine, while the result of learning to discipline ourselves to consist with the deepest discernible patterns of natural order is the garden.”

To quote further:

“The most elemental difference between the machine and the garden is that one is driven by a force which must be introduced from without, the other grown by an energy which originates from within itself.”

We produce waste through our efforts to extract materials from nature as hostile Other. A garden doesn’t produce waste, but rather nurtures cycles.

The machine is the linear economy. We think of the world as one where we extract materials, put them through society and then dispose of wastes. At every point we compel nature to meet our demands. We force it to our will.

A true understanding of the circular economy is as garden. In the garden we nurture systems that already exist and harvest bounties.

The circular economy doesn’t just extract better, but it totally upends how we conceive of ourselves, our world, and our role in the world. We work within existing patterns and systems, we see ourselves as part of those systems rather than standing above them.

“If indifference to nature leads to the machine, the indifference of nature leads to the garden. All culture has the form of gardening: the encouragement of spontaneity in others by way of one’s own, the respect for source, and the refusal to convert source into resource.”

The circular economy is not about more efficient conversion of resources, but about respect for sources. About a continued, sustainable harvest rather than a series of extractions. About keeping materials in motion, working within a self-contained system. About the creativity and imagination that is required to sustain such world.

In the waste world, we tend to see waste as an inevitable consequence of life and society. As if the act of living unfortunately but necessarily results in waste, something that is beyond our control. The truth is more subtle: “Waste is not a result of what we have made. It is what we have made”

The design of our society produces a certain type of waste, just as the design of our society produces a certain underclass of people, a certain amount of unemployment.

That design is neither necessary nor inevitable. We could do it differently, we could design a world where waste is understood as something to fold back into life rather than remove far away. Where people are cherished and lifted up rather than disposed of if they fall.

The design of our society produces a certain type of waste…that design is neither necessary nor inevitable

Where waste is valued rather than valueless. Worse, in fact. Waste has negative value. People pay to get rid of waste, it is something that people do not want.

This is the subtlety of the circular economy. It’s not about recycling better. It’s about reconceiving our entire society such that waste does not exist.

Carse describes waste as an unveiling. It reveals our society for what it is. The decisions we make, the things we value, the things we do not. And so we remove waste as far away as possible because we do not want to see what our society actually is. Waste needs to vanish, just as waste people need to be invisible.

There is nothing inevitable about how we manufacture waste. We can radically shift this.

The circular economy is about reconceiving our entire society such that waste does not exist

How do we make the shift? Well, I believe we do it by rethinking waste. Rather than moving it someplace far, far away to disappear, we bring it into the centre of our society and we design for it.

We take a gardening approach to waste.

“Gardeners celebrate variety, unlikeness, spontaneity. They understand that an abundance of styles is in the interest of vitality. The more complex the organic content of the soil, for example — that is, the more numerous its sources of change — the more vigorous its liveliness. Growth promotes growth.”

We set aside this urge to come up with a single Final Solution for waste, and instead nurture the diversity and abundance presented in the waste we create.

A machine worldview believes that there is something unwanted, and it is to be efficiently removed to keep society clean. And rather than seeing the abundance in all of these materials, the richness that it can foster, the diversity it can nurture, it would prefer to get rid of it.

To restate what I have said many, many times: waste is not one big problem, but is instead many, many small opportunities. Opportunities to be developed close to home, in a way that fosters jobs and life giving vibrancy.

To be even more explicit, rather than building great big processing plants, we carve out little niches of waste and make opportunities there. We push societies to be a little less “efficient”, but a lot more sustained, inclusive and prosperous.

To continue quoting from Carse:

“Our freedom in relation to nature is not the freedom to change nature; it is not the possession of power over natural phenomena. It is the freedom to change ourselves. We are perfectly free to design a culture that will turn on the awareness that vitality cannot be given but only found, that the given patterns of spontaneity in nature are not only to be respected, but to be celebrated.”

It is a reframing that requires a shift in how we see the world. Not as a machine to be most efficiently powered by resources, but as a garden to be nurtured. A garden that nurtures and changes us just as we steward it. Where we apply our energy and intention (it is, after all, a garden and not a wilderness), and do so within the system rather than above it.

The alternative to seeing nature as a garden is to see it as a machine. To believe that we can excuse ourselves from nature and get ever better at extracting resources to sustain that position.

With limits already biting, that’s doubling down in the hope that someday, somehow, in some way in the unknowable future, we will be proven right and our technology will elevate us above the world.

Gods in human form.

I don’t believe in gods. I don’t believe that we can stand above the world.

I do accept that we can catapult ourselves into the heavens, and for a brief moment gaze down upon the world laid out below us.

But our humanity pulls us back to earth. And as we soar high, we fall far.

Rather than burnishing hubris, let’s start nurturing the garden that will nurture us. Let’s do the work of designing a system in which we are a participant rather than an overlord. A system in which everybody can live good and full and bountiful lives.

Let’s create a circular economy.