Garbage Laws and Symbolic Policy: Governmental Responses to the Problem of Waste in the United States

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine governmental responses to the environmental problem of waste in the United States. The main thesis of this paper contends that environmental laws, particularly those concerned with addressing the problem of waste, are symbolic exercises because they reaffirm the ideological commitments of the industrial-consumer process, commitments that fail to recognize basic principles of ecology and stir the problem of waste in the first instance. The thesis that garbage laws are mainly symbolic exercises is elaborated in the following manner. First, drawing from the work of other scholars who have invoked the notion of symbolic law, the chief characteristics of the concept are iden tified. Having framed the concept of symbolic law, three ideological com mitments of the industrial-consumer process — belief in human domina tion of nature, creativity as a moral pursuit, and linearity of thought - are described. These ideological commitments contribute directly to the problem of waste through the championing of unadulterated consump tion. Noting some ecological challenges raised by garbage and waste dis posal to these ideological commitments, the next section relates some basic principles of ecology that would serve well as the underpinnings for environmental policy. An examination of the federal government's Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 as well as New York State's Solid Waste Management Act of 1988 confirms, however, that governmental responses to the problem of waste fail to slip free of indus trial-consumer ideological commitments. After assessing the response articulated by these two pieces of legislation, the paper concludes with some observations on symbolic law and environmental problems and with a few suggestions for informing our environmental policy with eco logical principles.