WASTE AND WANT: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF TRASH.
By Susan Strasser.
Henry Holt; 355 pages; $27.50
HISTORY, Henry Ford famously declared, is bunk. Only a visionary or a fool would ever say such a thing. He proved that he was the former by pioneering the assembly line, and turning the Model T into the first mass-market car. He was right to rubbish history, but did he expect to be made part of the history of rubbish?
That is exactly what Susan Strasser has done in “Waste and Want”. When Ford set out to make cars, she explains, Americans had already started to shed the age-old virtues of thrift. Ford's cars were “so strong and well-made that no one ought ever to have to buy a second one.” When General Motors, an upstart, introduced yearly style changes, Ford called it wasteful. In 1921, he controlled over half the American car market; by 1927, a single GM brand, Chevrolet, outsold the Model T.
In coming decades, Americans would zealously embrace this curious practice of rubbishing perfectly serviceable goods simply because newer models are available. Ms Strasser chronicles the rise of the disposable society. She explains how Americans came to allow products like Kleenex facial tissues, Reynolds aluminium foil and Kotex sanitary pads to displace home-made alternatives. Consumption came to be promoted as a “celebration of the modern way”.
This orgy of consumption has come at a price. These products come in packaging that must be binned; they are advertised in magazines and newspapers that themselves are binned; they pollute at the end of their useful lives.
Yet for much of American history, there was a two-way flow of materials between manufacturers and consumers. Consumers saved, re-used and recycled every bit and bob; salesmen came to their homes bartering for scrap metal, wool, fats and other items that they would recycle. Now, Americans throw such things away. Though this trend is disturbing, the author never descends into a moralistic harangue. Consumerism offered Americans convenience, cleanliness and comfort—of particular importance to women, for it freed them from the tyranny of housework. Obsolescence also helps explain America's great success in innovation.
The book's chief flaw is the author's tendency to include far more evidence than is really necessary. There are pages and pages describing the different ways bones and household scraps were re-used. Such obsession is tedious; it also drowns the argument in an ocean of anecdote. Another small grouse is that she is so convincing in describing consumerism's excesses that the reader cannot help but wonder what to do to fix the problem. Though Ms Strasser surely has prescriptions in mind, she does not include them in this book. Instead, she coyly suggests there are signs of change at the very heart of consumer culture. “If we can go further, taking steps to reduce the production of waste and pollution,” she adds, “profligacy may one day be understood as a stage of development.” Readers left salivating for a road-map to such a future will have to buy the next edition of her book, which will no doubt be new and improved.