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 one of the most coveted commendations of the modern era: “She is a hyper-efficient worker” – few job references could be better than this.

Much good has resulted from gains in efficiency, from increased time to spend on worthwhile projects to lives saved through medical efficiencies. And, perhaps most lauded by our society, efficiency has created a lot of wealth. It would be foolish to deny these truths. However, our total preoccupation and uncritical acceptance of efficiency 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 - 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 efficiency therefore 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 many 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 incredibly 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 use of resources or limited creation of waste but instead, laser focuses on the maximisation of profit and the maximum 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 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 new. The rubble that is created and subsequently disposed of is a testament to how wasteful a process this 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. An 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 buildings². 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. 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 ensures further extraction from our natural resources and further pollution and environmental degradation (cement making is an incredibly carbon-intensive process). The growth economy is more than happy to consume and destroy past creations in order to fuel more growth. Indeed, the growth economy is founded on the necessity of waste and (planned) obsolescence, and therefore the necessity of externalities and degradation.