Abstract
In advanced economies the ‘greening’ of the economy is widely seen as promising extensive job creation and upskilling, alongside its other benefits. In popular and policy rhetoric, the growing importance of ‘green skills’ is asserted frequently. This study critically examines these claims within the context of the electronic waste management sector in the United Kingdom. Drawing on the cases of a non‐profit organisation and a small private enterprise in North West England, we observe that despite government support for developing skills in e‐waste, both the development and utilisation of skills remain minimal. Critically, the relatively more skill‐intensive process of reuse is substantially less profitable than recycling and resource capture. The study concludes by noting that the expectations from the green economy for high‐quality jobs need to be assessed within the context of similar, misplaced celebrations of previous transformations of work to avoid recycling the same promises.
Highlights
In advanced capitalist economies including the European Union ( EU) and the United Kingdom ( UK) the ‘greening’ of the economy is widely seen as promising extensive job creation and upskilling
They allowed for a critical comparison in that Green NPO illustrated skills and training made possible through government financial support predicated on envisioned skills use in e-w aste management, whereas Green SME exemplified the workings of a private SME, the format of 93 per cent of the firms operating in the sector
The contrast between the policy-b acked resourcing of Green NPO and the market- based resourcing of Green SME corroborates the disconnect we propose between skills policy and use in green sectors
Summary
In advanced capitalist economies including the European Union ( EU) and the United Kingdom ( UK) the ‘greening’ of the economy is widely seen as promising extensive job creation and upskilling. As Green SME concentrated on the market returns of e-w aste, it minimised the reuse activities potentially demanding and fostering higher levels of skill, and expanded in the low-skill activities that proved far more profitable This was a near perfect illustration of the observation by Gregson and Crang (2015: 226) that ‘within the UK waste management business the source of revenue has been receiving waste, not reselling it or its products’, with especially the higher charges for more problematic material in large quantities being the main revenue generator (Gregson and Crang, 2015:226). The contrast between the policy-b acked resourcing of Green NPO and the market- based resourcing of Green SME corroborates the disconnect we propose between skills policy and use in green sectors
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