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Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago
A study of the struggle for environmental justice, focusing on conflicts over solid waste and pollution in Chicago. In Garbage Wars , the sociologist David Pellow describes the politics of garbage in Chicago. He shows how garbage affects residents in vulnerable communities and poses health risks to those who dispose of it. He follows the trash, the pollution, the hazards, and the people who encountered them in the period 1880-2000. What unfolds is a tug of war among social movements, government, and industry over how we manage our waste, who benefits, and who pays the costs. Studies demonstrate that minority and low-income communities bear a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards. Pellow analyzes how and why environmental inequalities are created. He also explains how class and racial politics have influenced the waste industry throughout the history of Chicago and the United States. After examining the roles of social movements and workers in defining, resisting, and shaping garbage disposal in the United States, he concludes that some environmental groups and people of color have actually contributed to environmental inequality. By highlighting conflicts over waste dumping, incineration, landfills, and recycling, Pellow provides a historical view of the garbage industry throughout the life cycle of waste. Although his focus is on Chicago, he places the trends and conflicts in a broader context, describing how communities throughout the United States have resisted the waste industry's efforts to locate hazardous facilities in their backyards. The book closes with suggestions for how communities can work more effectively for environmental justice and safe, sustainable waste management.
254 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2002
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347 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 21, 2021
5 stars for content but boy was this dense. Seemed like a dissertation that just got published without any editing for a general audience which is really too bad! I feel like another book on this topic would have Caste level popularity potential.
But I love learning about Chicago and this overall was a good read! Look up Operation Silver Shovel for a whack FBI and Chicago story!
But I love learning about Chicago and this overall was a good read! Look up Operation Silver Shovel for a whack FBI and Chicago story!
February 7, 2025
This book kind of reads like a college student who is cooking up the most subpar sociology essay this class has ever seen. But I thought the content was super interesting and that kept me going!!
January 23, 2023
Garbage Wars is a work in social history that traces twentieth-century conflicts over solid waste and pollution in Chicago and across the United States. At the most basic level, David Pellow, who describes himself as an “activist-scholar” embedded in the environmental justice movement, documents a complex narrative of what he calls the “movement-policy cycle.” This cycle is a historical pattern in which the environmental justice movement compels political authorities to modify or even eliminate “dirty” waste disposal facilities, only for civic leaders to implement new, supposedly “cleaner” policies that inevitably cause pollution and hence elicit opposition from community activists, which in turn prompts new policies, and so on (18, 29). The recurrence of this cycle in twentieth-century Chicago is uncanny and persists to this day. It reveals both “the power of social movements to influence politics” and, less fortunately, society’s ostensible inability to discover and develop sustainable waste disposal technologies (vii, 165). Pellow claims that active efforts by powerful institutions to inhibit creative, environmentally just solutions to the problem of urban waste lie behind this social ineptitude. It is no accident that history continues to repeat itself in terms of the movement-policy cycle (165).
At a deeper, more provocative level, Pellow also contends that environmental racism is not simply a product of corporate exploitation of poor people of color who passively endure environmentally unjust practices. In many instances, he demonstrates, community leaders, social activists, and even environmentalists are “deeply implicated,” consciously or unconsciously, in the perpetuation of environmental injustice (3). Sometimes, as in the case of the Robbins incinerator, civic leaders from marginalized communities actively invite the placement of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) to foster economic development in their impoverished neighborhoods. Other times, as in the construction of the “dirty” WMX materials recovery facility in Chicago, environmentalists, the state, and industrialists work in concert “to shift the externalities and effluents of industrial capitalism into the air, land, and water of poor . . . communities of color” (51). This new, more complex narrative of the environmental movement compels activists to confront their hidden (and, sometimes, not so hidden) complicity in environmental injustice. At the same time, it also underscores how institutional and structural factors create the conditions in which black and brown community leaders feel that they must choose between economic empowerment and environmental safety.
To explain the dynamics behind this modified narrative of the environmental movement, Pellow mobilizes what he calls a “new environmental justice framework.” This framework functions both as a tool to interpret discrete instances of environmental injustice and as a way to understand broader trends and patterns of environmental injustice. It has four major points: “the importance of process and history, the role of multiple stakeholder relationships, the impact of social stratification such as institutional racism and classism, and the ability of those groups with the least access to resources to resist toxics and other hazards” (15-16). Its emphasis on history underscores patterns like the movement-policy cycle and sociopolitical processes by which environmental burdens are created and distributed; its stakeholder perspective discloses an otherwise obscure web of motivations, resource distribution, and access to political power that characterizes each instance of environmental injustice; its institutional focus centers the decisive role of structural racism and endemic poverty in environmental injustice; and the stress it places on active resistance to environmental racism calls much-needed attention to how marginalized communities often help shape (and sometimes redress) environmental inequalities. In short, Pellow’s new environmental justice framework complicates what various media frequently portray as overly simplistic “perpetrator-victim” narratives. It “moves us beyond a model of environmental racism where pollution is unilaterally and uniformly imposed upon a population that reacts” to consider “a vision wherein many stakeholders display their full complexity and would-be victims become active agents” capable of resistance and political participation (165).
As an activist-scholar, Pellow seeks to shape the direction and character of the environmental justice movement. Thus, in conjunction with his environmental justice framework and the more complex narrative it fosters, Pellow emphasizes the need to consider environmental racism and injustice in relation to the labor movement. He strives to undermine what he perceives as a false dichotomy between environmental and labor issues, as if the success of one movement must come at the expense of the other. While it is true that environmental and labor concerns can (and often do) come into conflict, workers ultimately have dual needs: they desire cleaner local ecosystems within their communities and access to safe, well-compensated, and dignified work (62). The “treadmill of production” that fuels capital intensification and automation to maximize efficiency and profit not only results in environmental injustice but also harms workers, who face occupational hazards, increased hours on the job, lower pay, and unemployment (61, 63). Consequently, Pellow advocates that the health and safety of workers become central issues for environmental justice activists. He envisions a coalitional alliance between the environmental and labor movements mobilized around their common interests (64). In many ways, this vision corresponds with the ethos of the Green New Deal.
Garbage Wars offers a helpful sketch of the history of environmental injustice in Chicago centered on waste. While academic in method and tone, it is readily accessible to a broader, non-academic audience. Despite its many virtues, however, it lacks a robust theoretical backdrop that renders Pellow’s vision for environmental justice somewhat unclear. For example, Pellow defines environmental justice in a few short sentences in the book's first chapter. He states that it has an active character, concerned as it is to improve the overall quality of life for communities of color. With an eye toward John Rawls, he also asserts that environmental justice “seeks both ‘justice as fairness’ and justice as ‘mutual respect . . . owed to human beings as moral persons’” (8). With this much established, Pellow moves on to discuss other issues. Obviously, such brief references to Rawlsian justice as fairness are not sufficient; while it is, of course, possible to conceptualize environmental justice from a Rawlsian perspective, one must do more than allude to the idea of mutual respect. Moreover, there may be some tension between the postcolonial and Marxist analytical frameworks that Pellow employs later in the book and his evident commitment to Rawls. This theoretical lacuna in Garbage Wars means that Pellow fails to offer a substantive view of what environmental justice looks like. What is the ideal toward which the environmental justice movement should strive? As Pellow is a social historian, it is understandable Garbage Wars tends to look backward more than it looks forward. Nevertheless, Pellow is committed to the idea that the environmental justice movement needs a theoretical foundation (see the environmental justice framework). If this is true, then it seems we must have an ideal conception of justice in view to know what justice demands in particular instances. It is just this conception that is absent in Garbage Wars.
At a deeper, more provocative level, Pellow also contends that environmental racism is not simply a product of corporate exploitation of poor people of color who passively endure environmentally unjust practices. In many instances, he demonstrates, community leaders, social activists, and even environmentalists are “deeply implicated,” consciously or unconsciously, in the perpetuation of environmental injustice (3). Sometimes, as in the case of the Robbins incinerator, civic leaders from marginalized communities actively invite the placement of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) to foster economic development in their impoverished neighborhoods. Other times, as in the construction of the “dirty” WMX materials recovery facility in Chicago, environmentalists, the state, and industrialists work in concert “to shift the externalities and effluents of industrial capitalism into the air, land, and water of poor . . . communities of color” (51). This new, more complex narrative of the environmental movement compels activists to confront their hidden (and, sometimes, not so hidden) complicity in environmental injustice. At the same time, it also underscores how institutional and structural factors create the conditions in which black and brown community leaders feel that they must choose between economic empowerment and environmental safety.
To explain the dynamics behind this modified narrative of the environmental movement, Pellow mobilizes what he calls a “new environmental justice framework.” This framework functions both as a tool to interpret discrete instances of environmental injustice and as a way to understand broader trends and patterns of environmental injustice. It has four major points: “the importance of process and history, the role of multiple stakeholder relationships, the impact of social stratification such as institutional racism and classism, and the ability of those groups with the least access to resources to resist toxics and other hazards” (15-16). Its emphasis on history underscores patterns like the movement-policy cycle and sociopolitical processes by which environmental burdens are created and distributed; its stakeholder perspective discloses an otherwise obscure web of motivations, resource distribution, and access to political power that characterizes each instance of environmental injustice; its institutional focus centers the decisive role of structural racism and endemic poverty in environmental injustice; and the stress it places on active resistance to environmental racism calls much-needed attention to how marginalized communities often help shape (and sometimes redress) environmental inequalities. In short, Pellow’s new environmental justice framework complicates what various media frequently portray as overly simplistic “perpetrator-victim” narratives. It “moves us beyond a model of environmental racism where pollution is unilaterally and uniformly imposed upon a population that reacts” to consider “a vision wherein many stakeholders display their full complexity and would-be victims become active agents” capable of resistance and political participation (165).
As an activist-scholar, Pellow seeks to shape the direction and character of the environmental justice movement. Thus, in conjunction with his environmental justice framework and the more complex narrative it fosters, Pellow emphasizes the need to consider environmental racism and injustice in relation to the labor movement. He strives to undermine what he perceives as a false dichotomy between environmental and labor issues, as if the success of one movement must come at the expense of the other. While it is true that environmental and labor concerns can (and often do) come into conflict, workers ultimately have dual needs: they desire cleaner local ecosystems within their communities and access to safe, well-compensated, and dignified work (62). The “treadmill of production” that fuels capital intensification and automation to maximize efficiency and profit not only results in environmental injustice but also harms workers, who face occupational hazards, increased hours on the job, lower pay, and unemployment (61, 63). Consequently, Pellow advocates that the health and safety of workers become central issues for environmental justice activists. He envisions a coalitional alliance between the environmental and labor movements mobilized around their common interests (64). In many ways, this vision corresponds with the ethos of the Green New Deal.
Garbage Wars offers a helpful sketch of the history of environmental injustice in Chicago centered on waste. While academic in method and tone, it is readily accessible to a broader, non-academic audience. Despite its many virtues, however, it lacks a robust theoretical backdrop that renders Pellow’s vision for environmental justice somewhat unclear. For example, Pellow defines environmental justice in a few short sentences in the book's first chapter. He states that it has an active character, concerned as it is to improve the overall quality of life for communities of color. With an eye toward John Rawls, he also asserts that environmental justice “seeks both ‘justice as fairness’ and justice as ‘mutual respect . . . owed to human beings as moral persons’” (8). With this much established, Pellow moves on to discuss other issues. Obviously, such brief references to Rawlsian justice as fairness are not sufficient; while it is, of course, possible to conceptualize environmental justice from a Rawlsian perspective, one must do more than allude to the idea of mutual respect. Moreover, there may be some tension between the postcolonial and Marxist analytical frameworks that Pellow employs later in the book and his evident commitment to Rawls. This theoretical lacuna in Garbage Wars means that Pellow fails to offer a substantive view of what environmental justice looks like. What is the ideal toward which the environmental justice movement should strive? As Pellow is a social historian, it is understandable Garbage Wars tends to look backward more than it looks forward. Nevertheless, Pellow is committed to the idea that the environmental justice movement needs a theoretical foundation (see the environmental justice framework). If this is true, then it seems we must have an ideal conception of justice in view to know what justice demands in particular instances. It is just this conception that is absent in Garbage Wars.
April 29, 2012
this book is just ok. it is clearly someone's graduate dissertation. the first chapter is all on method and framework which i found tedious - it would've made a better preface. the stories though were good and thinking about recycling from a environmental justice/environmental racism standpoint was very useful. but for garbage itself heather rogers' book - Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage was a much more engaging and informative read.
April 2, 2024
Insightful in its scope and for its time, but desperately in need of an update from the author or from new authors in the field. While that certainly does not take away from the value of this work, it does leave the reader wondering where we are today.
Highly recommend for any Chicagolander, it certainly has drawn attention to what is around me in my own community, and most importantly, the history and contention over waste in Chicagoland.
Highly recommend for any Chicagolander, it certainly has drawn attention to what is around me in my own community, and most importantly, the history and contention over waste in Chicagoland.
January 1, 2018
pretty academic, but once you get to chapter 3 and to the case studies it becomes easier to read. very specific to Chicago and its history of environmental racism through the 1990s, a lot of which is still seen today.
March 23, 2020
Pellow makes a very good case for the need to understand and investigate how garbage is handled in a big city. There's lots of detail about how Chicago had been dealing with what people through out each day. The book also shows the challenges of tackling a big city system.
April 17, 2021
I read this book because my son was assigned to read it for one of his sociology classes. Boring! And very outdated. All statistics are from the 1980s and 1990s.This book may have been interesting then but not now. Laborious read.
July 16, 2020
I learned something!
July 18, 2021
It was interesting and important information but it was hard to get thru. It reads like a research paper and is very dry at times.
July 23, 2010
this book is brilliant, important and devastatingly urgent. Pellow elucidate how capital externalizes its costs by pushing them onto specifically Black and broadly people of color communities, and poor people always. The complicated nexus between the racial state in it's multiple and contradictory forms (from the EPA to local planning boards) and the racial corporation. while he is attentive to resistance and this is the goal of his project the books is devastating because of just how little Pellow has to write about in this respect. such is the challenge and the demand.
June 21, 2016
There were a lot of really good ideas and threads in this book. Definitely thought provoking and challenging. But the writing was a little rough - the concepts weren't tied together or reinforced as well as i thought they could have been. Still worth reading, though, for a big picture view of environmental justice that doesn't shy away from complexities and challenges.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews