Waste and Consumption by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi

Author:Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi [Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136165160
Google: ziUA5rmmyboC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-08-06T03:40:02+00:00

Home Sweet Home

In this book I draw many examples for my discussion from Italy. I am Italian and I am always interested in following what happens there. However, I don’t want to give you the impression that Italy is the only place in which these things happen; on the contrary. Let’s take a look at a place closer to you.

In the United States, reporters exposed the Love Canal disaster in 1978. This tragedy brought to the forefront the problem of reckless disposal of toxic waste (Colten and Skinner 1995; Beck 1979). Originally planned to make possible the growth of a dream community in the early 1900s, the Love Canal was supposed to be built between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers with the hope of generating power for industries and homes in the new model city. The project, named after the man who sponsored it, William Love, came to a halt due to economic and technological problems, and what remained of William Love’s dream was just a partial ditch where the canal had originally been planned.

In the 1920s, the canal became a municipal dumpsite for industrial chemicals produced by the company that owned the property. Eventually, the company covered the dumpsite with soil and sold it to the city in the 1950s. Later in the decade, a school and a hundred houses were built over the site. Filled with 22,000 tons of waste from the chemical factory, the pit of the canal was leaking and contaminating air, water, and soil with carcinogenic substances. This dangerous situation, however, did not attract much attention until the summer of 1978 when, after a record amount of rain fell over Love Canal, chemicals leaking through the ground came to the surface along with rotting drum containers. According to the New York Times’ front-page article of August 1, 1978, at least eleven chemical compounds that had percolated upward through the soil after the torrential rains were potential carcinogens.

What I find particularly disturbing about Love Canal, which is considered one of the worst environmental tragedies in the United States, is the catastrophic and ill-conceived idea of building over waste. Unfortunately, it appears that Love Canal is not an isolated case. In his book on the camorra’s criminal activities around Naples in Southern Italy, Roberto Saviano (2006) tells the story of lovely houses built over illegal dumpsites that, after filling to capacity, had been turned into residential grounds. Eager to own their own little villas, middle- to lower-middle-class families bought these new constructions, attracted by their cheap prices. Workers, employees, and retirees got their chance to become home-owners and did not seem to mind that their homes were literally erected on garbage.

Curiously, according to Saviano, the so-called bosses of the camorra have also built their large, lavish mansions over fields of refuse, toxic and otherwise. With all their money, you might wonder, why would they want to do that? As perverse as this might sound, I think that in their case it makes some sense: by setting camp on garbage they are, like Uncle Scrooge, sleeping over their own mountains of gold.

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