Wasteful Efficiency

The modern economic system is paradoxically highly wasteful

Photo by Evan Demicoli on Unsplash

The modern man is infatuated with efficiency. Everywhere one looks efficiency is touted not only as the next best thing, but also as a virtue. New technologies promise to “save us time” and CEOs herald their efficiency statistics at Annual General Meetings. Workers are judged and rewarded by their output, and the one who responds immediately to a message is everyone’s friend. Efficiency is one of the main standards by which we judge success and is among the most coveted commendations of the modern era: “She is a hyper-efficient worker” — few job references could be better than this.

It must be said that much good has resulted from gains in efficiency. From increased time to spend on worthwhile projects to lives saved through medical efficiencies, increases in effiecny have made our lives easier and safer (broadly speaking). And, perhaps most lauded by our society, efficiency has created a lot of wealth. It would be foolish to deny these truths.

However, our modern day total preoccupation and uncritical acceptance of efficiency in all areas of life is problematic; as is our reduction of efficiency to mean activities and techniques that save time and money to the seeming exclusion of all other worthwhile efficiencies (such as total resource-use efficiency). What often remains invisible to our fast-paced society is that efficiency comes with hidden costs that will eventually rear their ugly heads and bite us. One problem, in particular, stands out like a sore thumb — waste.

On the surface, this may sound counterintuitive and paradoxical. The Cambridge Dictionary definition of efficiency is “working in a way that does not waste a resource”. Surely increased efficiency should result in less wasted time and fewer wasted resources? From one angle, yes both these statements are true. But they only remain correct when tunnel vision is applied¹ and when only one or two aspects of value (monetary profit or time) are considered. As we will see, there are myriad hidden costs and hidden wastes resulting from efficiency that are uncovered by those who begin to probe underneath the surface. 

I argue that efficiency, as practised in modernity, is often an exorbitantly wasteful process. There is nothing inherently wasteful in efficiency, and a theoretical (but energetically impossible) total efficient use of resources would lead to no waste. However, modern efficiency no longer strives for the total or even maximal use of resources let alone the limited creation of waste, but instead, laser focuses on the maximisation of profit and saving of time. A pertinent example is the wasteful and imprecise blanketing of agrochemicals over our fields. Wasteful practices such as this are permitted because efficiency is the servant of other modern values or pseudo-virtues: ease, labour/time saving, comfort, and profit. Efficiency carried out in conjunction with these values is what leads to instances of gross waste. That which cannot be done quickly, that which hinders and gets in the way of the machine, or that which cannot be subdued to come under the processes of efficiency are destined for neglect, destruction, or disposal in the modern economic system (and this sometimes includes humans as well as objects and creatures).

Take, for example, the process of demolition. To build a new house on land previously built on, the most efficient, profitable, and convenient manner is to demolish what was there before. Adapting or converting buildings is a costly, skilful, and time-consuming process. It is much quicker to destroy what is there, clear the land, and erect something entirely new. The mountains of rubble created and subsequently disposed of is a testament to how wasteful a process demolition is.

Much of the building materials: bricks, windows, and wooden beams that make up old buildings are perfectly reusable and often better and more beautifully made than the modern materials that replace them. A truly and virtuously efficient system would find new uses for these materials either through incorporating them into the new build or selling them on. It is even possible that a house can be dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt elsewhere, as is the practice for some listed or heritage buildings.² But we all know this is not what happens to most buildings. Instead, the efficiency of time is prioritised, and what is still useful tragically becomes waste consigned to a skip or a fly-tipper’s heap.

There is another form of waste attached to this process of disposal, one that connects the present to the past. What society fails to consider in its calculations of efficiency is the time and resources already spent in the original production of the materials we are consigning to the trash heap. Disposing of these ‘sunk costs’ brings new sources of inefficiency into the project once broader temporal scales are considered and accounted for. We are wasting the time and energy that previous generations spent and are requiring other people’s time to be now used in designing, creating, and transporting the new materials. This time could have been spent up keeping, refurbishing, or modifying what we already have and has been entrusted into our care by the generations who came before us.

Of course, this flurry of new production has benefits in job and “wealth” creation and may avoid what some call the ‘sunk cost fallacy’. But this practice also necessitates further extraction from our natural resources and further pollution and environmental degradation (cement making is an incredibly carbon-intensive process). This matters little though to the the growth economy which is more than happy to consume and destroy past creations in order to fuel its never-satisfied appetite. Indeed, the growth economy is founded on the necessity of waste and (planned) obsolescence, and therefore the necessity of externalities and degradation. 

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Opportunity costs are one reason I propose why waste is an efficient and necessary process, especially in the examples above. It takes time to find buyers or people willing to take the old building materials, and as the modern adage goes, time is money. A construction company needs to retain its profitability (and shareholder value). It cannot be expected to “waste” time and money by cleaning up its costly mess — time which could have been used to build another house (hence the opportunity cost).

There are two significant problems with this argument. Firstly, it represents a total reneging of responsibilities, stewardship, and sustainability that every company should be bound to. Secondly, it is enlightening to further consider the locked-in value and productivity within these materials that are wasted. They are the product of the work, ingenuity and energy of our forefathers. By consigning the work of their hands to the trash heap we are desecrating their work and legacy all for the sake of convenience and time saving. They would be aghast to think that we can so casually and wastefully destroy their creations of blood, sweat, and toil. 

Not only does efficiency lead to the destruction and disposal of that which cannot be internalised and made subservient to its fast, rapid processes, but efficiency also leads to neglect — another pertinent form of waste. James C. Scott in his magisterial work Seeing Like a State, highlights that this form of waste arises from a mindset of tunnel vision that can only see one type of value — a perverse characteristic of many states and their attendant bureaucrats. That nature has diverse values is obvious to the reflective observer: aesthetic, medicinal, ecological, and even monetary value are some of the values that can be readily perceived. However, to the industrial forester (to use Scott’s example) only one value takes precedence: monetary value, along with its servant, efficiency. As Scott elucidates:

“The early modern state… viewed its forests primarily through the fiscal lens of revenue needs… The best way to appreciate how heroic [wasteful] was this constriction of vision is to notice what fell outside its vision. Lurking behind the number indicating revenue yield were not so much forests as commercial wood…Missing of course, were all those trees, bushes, and plants holding little or no potential for state revenue. Missing as well were all those parts of trees, even revenue bearing trees, which might have been useful to the population but whose value could not be converted into fiscal receipts. Here I have in mind foliage and its uses as fodder and thatch; fruits…twigs and branches… bark and roots, for making medicines and resins; and so forth.”³

The forester looks at his forest and only takes note of those trees with immediate and efficient value: the pines, larches, and firs (which, incidentally, due to their long and straight form are those trees most fitted to be used by the Machine). Every other species that could be put to good and productive use or whose value is contingent on its remaining in place (e.g., by contributing to the ecology of the forest) is neglected, overlooked, and perhaps destroyed in the process of extracting value from the forest undertaken by violently ripping up or felling trees. The opportunities for additional sources of employment and creative industries (such as wild foraging, basket making, and hardwood carpentry) that these other species provided are ignored or obliterated. As Wendell Berry states, waste is the “evidence of good work not done by people able to do it.”⁴ What is left after the industrial forester has moved on is a bare hillside of tree stumps — a stark visible testament to the activities of waste which have shaped and formed this now desecrated landscape.

What, though, I suggest is the greatest delusion that our infatuation with efficiency has caused is the false sense of time accounting that results from the dominant short-term tunnel vision of efficiency. This accounting fallacy of “postponing the cost” is starkly evidenced in our dominant waste disposal practices. In the short term, quickly disposing of waste saves both time and money for industries and households alike. We kid ourselves though that we have saved time. Eventually, the destructive, degrading, or polluting impacts of our efficient processes will become plain and clear. This leads me to a general observation: Time “saved” now often results in a greater amount of time wasted in the future, whether this be for the original actor or for future generations.

This is observation is evident in the landscapers close to my home. The land adjacent to the Thames estuary in Essex, by virtue of its proximity to the urban sprawl of London, was often utilised for rubbish tips. Short-sighted bureaucrats sanctioned vast mountains of waste from London to be buried pits close to the river. The issue of what to do with the waste was thus buried and forgotten about. However, now through processes of riverbank erosion, the waste of the past is now falling into the Thames, some of it toxic, causing new and pressing problems for the current generation to mitigate⁵. Addressing this slowly progressing but ever-growing environmental disaster requires expensive and time-consuming efforts to remediate the contaminants and pick up the trash (again), and some of the ecological costs are likely to be permanent. Thus, when considering the issue of London’s waste disposal using long-term lenses, time has not been saved by society and our environment has suffered permanent degradation. This is just one example among many where short-term efficiency leads to long-term intergenerational costs. Another pertinent example is climate change (resulting from the wastes of carbon from our industrial processes) which will waste future lands through drought and sea level rise and cause untold time-consuming, multi-faceted problems for those who come after us.

Cleaning up the mess

What now are we to do? A partial cure for our aberrant practices of efficiency would be to heed the advice of Wendell Berry. In his essay Horse Drawn Tools and the Doctrine of Labour Saving Berry states the principle that we should “use the saved labour [time] in the same places where we saved it.” This is an inherently sustainable and productive practice. The builders who knock down the building should then use the time they saved to deal properly with the waste — using again what they can and passing on what they cannot. Only then should the excess be responsibly and properly disposed of with as minimal impact as possible. Likewise, the farmer who saves time using a plough or tractor should then take time to ensure that her soils are not lost or degraded. In the long run, this will lead to greater productivity and a more convivial environment. Adherence to Berry’s principle is not though how modern man instinctively acts. Instead, he is apt to use any time saved exclusively on leisure or on other actions which increase his productivity and profit. He shirks his responsibilities and offloads the costs of his actions onto his children and grandchildren. And he (read, we) will be remembered for it.

We must therefore take greater responsibility for the waste resulting from our actions. Many generations are likely to follow ours. What we do now affects their standard of living, and how much time our grand- and great grandchildren will have to waste cleaning up our mess. To address this in the here and now will be costly (taking responsibility always is). We need to relinquish the modern vice-filled attitude of “We have a right to throw away and bear no responsibility”. Someone somewhere down the line always foots the bill, whether that be present-day Asian communities whose rivers are clogged to overflowing with single-use plastics⁶, or future generations of Thames estuary residents struggling to cope with waters laden with toxic leachate.

Corporations that mass produce throwaway products shoulder the weight of responsibility and bear the cost of cleaning up the products they have often designed to be thrown away (single-use plastics) or have planned to decay and degrade (planned obsolescence). Some costs could be passed on to the consumer as they too share some burden for waste, although the challenge for policymakers will be to come up with proposals which avoid the pitfalls of regressive impacts on the poorest in society.

One thing though is obvious. Our infatuation with plastic should be reconsidered. This so-called “wonder” material is hard or nigh on impossible to mend when it breaks,⁷ is toxic and polluting when it decays (microplastics), is challenging to recycle, and is aesthetically ugly. Instead, a societal transformation to one-time purchase refillable containers is needed — products of durability, practicality, and aesthetic beauty (so many of the everyday tins and bottles of the past are now valued as beautiful antiques — the same cannot be said for a plastic bottle of Coca Cola). Although the activities of refilling will take up precious time and cause many inconveniences, we must remember we have never been given a divine right to pollute and waste.  

We were commended to steward and keep the land — not to desecrate it. Any practice that helps us avoid desecration is then worth doing.  

1. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press.

2. This is one example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlton_Tavern

3. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press.

4. Wendell Berry, Waste. (an essay).

5. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/18/the-rubbishscapes-of-essex-why-our-buried-trash-is-back-to-haunt-us

6. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/policy-reports/tackling-plastic-waste-and-pollution-for-human-health-and-marine-biodiversity-a-call-for-global-acti

7. Mark Stoll, Profit: And Environmental History. Polity.