Urban Recycling and the Search for Sustainable Community Development - Hardcover

Weinberg, Adam S.; Pellow, David N.; Schnaiberg, Allan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691050147 ISBN 13: 9780691050140

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2000

Synopsis

More Americans recycle than vote. And most do so to improve their communities and the environment. But do recycling programs advance social, economic, and environmental goals? To answer this, three sociologists with expertise in urban and environmental planning have conducted the first major study of urban recycling. They compare four types of programs in the Chicago metropolitan area: a community-based drop-off center, a municipal curbside program, a recycling industrial park, and a linkage program. Their conclusion, admirably elaborated, is that recycling can realize sustainable community development, but that current programs achieve few benefits for the communities in which they are located.

The authors discover that the history of recycling mirrors many other urban reforms. What began in the 1960s as a sustainable community enterprise has become a commodity-based, profit-driven industry. Large private firms, using public dollars, have chased out smaller nonprofit and family-owned efforts. Perhaps most troubling is that this process was not born of economic necessity. Rather, as the authors show, socially oriented programs are actually more viable than profit-focused systems. This finding raises unsettling questions about the prospects for any sort of sustainable local development in the globalizing economy.

Based on a decade of research, this is the first book to fully explore the range of impacts that recycling generates in our communities. It presents recycling as a tantalizing case study of the promises and pitfalls of community development. It also serves as a rich account of how the state and private interests linked to the global economy alter the terrain of local neighborhoods.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"This book represents a ground-breaking attempt to understand an important emerging dimension of the American economy. It will have a considerable impact on the way social scientists understand sustainable development initiatives. . .The recent travails of New York City in trying to find a new home for its garbage suggest that the phenomena examined in this book have an enduring practical significance for most Americans in metropolitan areas."--Thomas Rudel, author of Situations and Strategies in American Land Use Planning

About the Author:

Adam S. Weinberg is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colgate University and coauthor of Local Environmental Struggles. He has advised many communities, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies on sustainable development. David N. Pellow is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has published widely on environmental racism and justice, participated in several federal initiatives, and served on the board of many nonprofit organizations. Allan Schnaiberg is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and a faculty associate of its Institute for Policy Research. His numerous publications include The Environment: From Surplus to Scarcity and Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0691050147
• ISBN 13: 9780691050140
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232