Waste, Recycling and Entrepreneurship in Central and Northern Europe, 1870-1940

Jones, Geoffrey; Spadafora, Andrew

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2404487

Cited by 2 publications

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“…At the same time, the rag-andbone man remained a common figure who bought reusable wastes from private households and small businesses and resold them to the salvage trade to make a living. Diverse industrial sectors absorbed such wastes as old leather, paper, rags, waste rubber, or animal skins (Jones & Spadafora, 2014;Weber, 2014), and manifold enterprises were involved in waste reprocessing measures. Trading and reprocessing metal scrap, followed by rags, then bones, and fourth, waste paper constituted the major fields of this business (Weber, 2014).…”

Section: Establishing the National Socialist Waste Exploitation Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Nazi German waste recovery and the vision of a circular economy: The case of waste paper and rags

Weber

2021

Business History

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In Nazi Germany , reclaiming waste became an intrinsic component of the regime's economy as well as its ideological, racial, and expansionist ambitions. National Socialist interventions into waste streams began in 1934 with salvage campaigns. The state then brought urban waste policies and municipal waste services under its control, restructuring and 'Aryanising' the waste salvage trade. Moreover, both consumers and producers were prompted to collect and reprocess waste. Over time, the gradual expansion of the Nazi waste recovery policies and campaigns -here referred to as the 'Nazi waste exploitation regime' -brought forth a determined vision of a circular economy in which no waste whatsoever should escape its reclamation for the national community or Volksgemeinschaft. This article sketches the actors, structures, and objectives of this waste exploitation regime for the case of rags and paper and uncovers its entanglement with Nazi racist and genocidal ideology and expansionism.

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Section: Establishing the National Socialist Waste Exploitation Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Nazi German waste recovery and the vision of a circular economy: The case of waste paper and rags

Weber

2021

Business History

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“…Multiple handbooks from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century document the contemporary wish for industrial and material conservation by waste recovery (Kershaw, 1928;Koller, 1902;Razous, 1905;Simmonds, 1862). While we do not know how many of these waste utilisation processes were applied in practice (Boons, 2008), the decades around 1900 did experience a rise of small entrepreneurial firms which tried diverse methods to profit from reclaiming old and new waste and some committed to improving public sanitation (Jones & Spadafora, 2014). The founding of national trade organisations such as the American National Association of Waste Material Dealers in 1913 and the German Verein der Rohproduktenhändler Deutschlands in 1902 most likely signalled both the business's professionalisation and its wish to gain a stronger representation inside the industrial economies of the day (Durr, 2006;Weber, 2021;Zimring, 2004, p. 91).…”

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Rethinking waste within business history: A transnational perspective on waste recycling in World War II

Denton

Weber

2021

Business History

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Waste and its reuse have constituted an important field of economic activity for most of human history, including modern times. While the collected articles of this special issue exemplify the significance that waste salvage had in mobilising resources in Europe, Asia, and North America in World War II, this introduction situates these cases in a longterm perspective. It explores the continuities and ruptures inside the structures, markets, and actors of the salvage business from late nineteenth century waste reclamation, including the sanitary era of municipal waste disposal, to the more recent era of 'green' recycling. It argues that we need to rethink waste's role within business history by delineating four basic characteristics of the waste business: the moral economies that govern wasting and reusing; the informality of the trade and its operations; the trans-sectorality of the waste streams; and the reverse logistics of the waste salvage trade. Introduction: waste economies and times of warFor most of human history, waste and its reuse have been an important field of economic activity, even if this field became largely invisible in an era of modernisation, industrialisation, and mass production. The articles of this special issue, along with our introduction, highlight the immense scope and significance of the 'business of waste ' (Stokes et al., 2013), but more importantly, they carve out some of the specific characteristics of what it means to deal and trade with waste. They do so by taking the extreme example of World War II as a vantage point: a period when warring states restructured their economies, enforced salvage drives, and began to interfere directly or indirectly with the existent structures, actors, networks, and material flows of the traditional waste and recycling business -referred to at the time as waste salvage or the scrap trade. We argue that the war period can serve as an entry point for historians to uncover otherwise largely hidden actors, structures, and channels of the waste trade because the wartime economy brought them to light; the salvage business underwent substantial transformations in belligerent states which left behind manifold traces in trade statistics, business records, and archives.

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Waste, Recycling and Entrepreneurship in Central and Northern Europe, 1870-1940

Cited by 2 publications

References 33 publications

Nazi German waste recovery and the vision of a circular economy: The case of waste paper and rags

Nazi German waste recovery and the vision of a circular economy: The case of waste paper and rags

Rethinking waste within business history: A transnational perspective on waste recycling in World War II

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