Understanding waste and value

Collaboration is key

Trine Brox has, over three decades, built up a deep understanding of the cultures and societies in the Tibetan world through her studies and stays in Tibetan communities in India, China, and Nepal. Her current project on waste seeks to co-produce knowledge about consumption and its resultant waste in collaboration with local authorities, civil society, practitioners, among others.

- I do practice-based research, which means that my research addresses problems identified not only by me, who research waste, but also by those who waste and those who work with waste. I see it as a collaboration, where my Tibetan partners are not merely 'my informants'. I don't go out there and just extract or collect information to write and publish, but I want to organise research that produces mutual learning and capacity building, she says.

Trine Brox believes in the importance of locally rooted research and collaboration that can contribute to relevant and sustainable changes and solutions to local and global challenges.

Local realities – local solutions

Trine Brox’s research starts from the premise that waste is more than just a problem requiring improved technical and management solutions. Her studies in the Himalayas document how imported technological solutions, including underground dustbins and biogas plants, influence ideas, experiences, and practices of consumption and waste in Tibetan communities. For example, in the town where she works, which is situated in the Himalayan foothills at an altitude of 2.100 metres above sea level, with stunning mountain views and a rich forest, she has witnessed the failure of the installation of underground dustbins imported from Europe.

- I have seen the same underground dustbins in Copenhagen. They seem to work here, but in the Himalayas, the waste history is, of course, shaped by the town’s particular geography, topography, environment, demographic composition, consumption patterns, accelerated economic growth, and so forth. For example, the town has encroached on the surrounding forest and turned it into a concrete jungle with concrete roads and concrete buildings. As it becomes harder for the monsoon rains to be absorbed into the ground, the roads are washed out, and the special garbage truck cannot travel the windy roads up the mountain to empty the underground dustbins. So, the bins clog up with waste and become useless. Heaps of waste around the bins attract animals: monkeys, stray dogs, cows, and ravens. They scavenge the dumping ground, and they scatter the waste further into the jungle. The presence of animals discourages people from placing their waste in the bin but instead throw their waste bags at the bin, Trine Brox explains.

Imagining waste – following waste

Apart from looking at what is happening around such waste infrastructures in the Himalayas, Trine Brox is also exploring Buddhist notions of waste and value, as well as globally circulating ideas about climate change, which are equally important to understanding local waste and wasting:

- It's not only about the failure of technological solutions or the inadequacy of current waste infrastructures, but also about what I call waste imaginaries and waste trajectories. For example, how will the current construction of a biogas plant in this Himalayan town influence how people think about, experience, and waste food?

We need different perspectives, including other academic disciplines like engineering and biology, as well as local stakeholders, who are experts in their own right.

Trine Brox works with the concept pair “waste imaginaries” and “waste trajectories” to understand why and how things are defined and sorted as waste, and how they are then handled. Waste imaginaries refer to the ideas, feelings, and understandings that people have about the world, where things belong, and how people relate to those things. She explains:

- It is not just about the physical properties of waste, but also the symbolic and social meanings. Waste trajectories are about the paths waste takes; how waste is handled and where it ends up, which depends upon waste imaginaries.

- It's not just about the materials and their life cycles. It's also about how it feels to handle waste, where you think it belongs, and what values you place in it. It's about moral politics, societal values, and waste feelings and beliefs: How come it is so easy to throw away certain items when we are done with them, but it feels so wrong to discard others?

What do we associate with value?

Trine Brox refers to the Tibetan concept of “tendrel.” It is best translated as “interdependence.” It is about how everything is connected – plants, people, animals, deities, the stuff we consume, everything. Tendrel is a Buddhist concept, but it resembles in some ways our ideas about the interconnectedness that we find within the concept of ecosystems, Trine Brox explains. She finds it interesting to see how different concepts are activated when people talk about and behave around waste. Waste imaginaries are as important to understand as the materialities of waste that offers possibilities of re-circulation and recycling rather than discarding. 

Trine Brox provides an example of how new consumer goods, such as packaged food and imported sweets, replace traditional ritual offerings in Buddhist societies: 

- There is also a local discussion about what is valuable and appropriate in the Buddhist economy, and how it affects ritual practices, consumption, and waste. What has value today might be an exotic juice in a tetra pack or an individually wrapped biscuit, rather than local produce, which was commonly offered. Today, people are likely to buy sweets that are individually packaged in plastic and that have travelled from far away because they are valued as appropriate food for the gods or good gifts for the monastics.

Contemporary Buddhist ideas about abundance and generosity combined with items that are problematic to discard, such as multi-layered plastics, as well as the everyday consumption of such items, contribute an environmental challenge when they are discarded, Trine Brox relates. She elaborates further on how the town’s waste is just tipped over the mountain slope behind the bus station. This waste – which is more abundant and more materially complex than only a couple of decades ago – disrupts ideals such as the interconnectedness of everything, tendrel, and knocks out Buddhist values of moderation, Trine Brox explains. Contemporary Buddhism must be understood also from this angle.

From research to policy

Trine Brox believes that her research can help influence policy from below by engaging local voices so that the green transition is not a mere slogan. 

- I work with the local stakeholders who get their hands dirty, so to speak. We must include the people who sort waste at home and take out their garbage, the contractor who removes the waste, and the green workers at the landfill. It is through their experiences of waste that we can ask the right questions and put pressure on local authorities to accommodate changes that facilitate the green transition.

Trine Brox sees interdisciplinary collaboration as crucial to promoting change. Her research team includes scholars from area studies, religious studies, and anthropology. Their research is important for unravelling these waste imaginaries and waste trajectories, but she also recognizes that this collaboration is not sufficient alone to find solutions and implement them directly in the local community:

- We need different perspectives, including other academic disciplines like engineering and biology, as well as local stakeholders, who are experts in their own right.

Read more about Trine Brox’ research.