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- Title
Müll und Recycling: Der Glaube an das technische Schließen von »Stoffkreisläufen«.
- Authors
Weber, Heike
- Abstract
With reference to the case of (West) Germany and three different historical episodes, this article asks to what extent the metaphor of the cycle and of closing material loops served actors to demand or achieve more waste recycling. It considers waste (first) in the city around 1900, (second) in the Nazi regime and (third) the post-war West German waste disposal system. Similar to today’s call for a »circular economy«, the circular metaphor suggested that material »cycles« could be technically closed. Nature and its biogeochemical cycles proved the model for this circular thinking among hygienists, waste experts, urban engineers and many others. The circular metaphor expressed the hope that the problem of waste could be solved technologically without having to profoundly transform the social metabolism of society and its structures of production and consumption. To this day, even scientific, technological and economic knowledge about entropy or the complexity of recycling’s logistics and material transformations has not diminished the persuasiveness of the closed loop metaphor.
- Subjects
GERMANY; CIRCULAR economy; METAPHOR; BIOGEOCHEMICAL cycles; WASTE recycling; HAZARDOUS wastes; WASTE management; ECONOMICS
- Publication
Werkstatt Geschichte (Transcript Verlag), 2022, Vol 85, Issue 1, p13
- ISSN
0942-704X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.14361/zwg-2022-850103