Socialist Societies

Waste Characteristics

Socialist societies had three key features that impacted their waste issues: (1) their economies were based on the state ownership of the means of production and on central planning as a key mechanism of distribution, a function that in capitalist countries is performed by the market; (2) their political regimes were ruled by communist parties and lacked liberal, democratic institutions; and (3) their model of modernization relied very heavily on metallurgy and engineering.

It is commonly assumed that these societies were wasteful in the sense of producing low-quality goods and using materials inefficiently, thus producing more by-products, emissions, and waste per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) than did capitalist countries. Economists primarily have explained these data by the absence of the profit motive and by the relative backwardness of socialist economies. However, by the statistical measure of waste per capita, these societies actually proved to be less wasteful than many modern capitalist economies. The lack of Western-style consumerism not only tempered the amount of waste produced but also meant that the key logic of waste production was different from those of capitalist economies.

While market economies tend toward overproduction, and thus a key systemic source of waste in their case is that supply exceeds demand, centrally planned economies struggled with chronic shortages. Economist János Kornai, analyzing the systemic causes of what he called the “shortage economy,” demonstrated that central plan quotas were too tight and did not leave room for accidents or other eventualities so as to prevent the diversion of materials away from building communism. The relative underdevelopment of production technologies and the scarcities of a postwar economy and infrastructure also would have required greater slack. As a result, enterprises had to devise strategies for fulfilling the plan, even when sufficient inputs were not available, such as the substitution of inputs and hoarding of raw materials and other products. Both strategies had significant consequences for waste production. Products manufactured with materials different from the ones technically prescribed were more likely to be defective and hence discarded. As Zsuzsa Gille shows, hiding and hoarding materials to ensure against shortages also resulted in their spoiling, rotting, rusting, or evaporating and were thus wasted without ever having been used.

Waste Management

State socialism's unique economic system also had an implication for the ways in which waste was seen and treated. Most of the East European [Page 830]socialist countries also established an extensive state-run infrastructure by which all wastes in industry were recorded, and their distribution for reuse and recycling was organized. The central planning offices gave state-owned enterprises quotas that determined not only how much of a particular product they should manufacture but also how much waste they would generate and thus should hand over to the central waste-collecting company. Households were also encouraged to turn in their unused wastes (including paper, old metal pots and pans, bottles, feathers, and even animal bones) to the state, usually in return for small monetary compensation. Food and drink were usually sold in glass bottles or jars on which there was a deposit, rather than in plastic, so that consumers had an economic interest in returning these containers, which manufacturers then sterilized and reused. Grocery stores did not provide plastic bags, so consumers had to take their own bags or baskets for each shopping trip. Such concern with material thrift and collecting and reusing waste—especially metal scrap—was not related to environmental problems, at least initially, but primarily arose from the postwar scarcity of metals and the need for rapid industrialization due to the accelerating arms race and cold war–era competition in living standards between East and West.

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