Making a Green Machine: The Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling

Consider an empty bottle or can, one of the hundreds of billions of beverage containers that are discarded worldwide every year. Empty containers have been at the center of intense political controversies, technological innovation processes, and the modern environmental movement. Making a Green Machine examines the development of the Scandinavian beverage container deposit-refund system, which has the highest return rates in the world, from 1970 to present. Finn Arne Jørgensen investigates the challenges the system faced when exported internationally and explores the critical role of technological infrastructures and consumer convenience in modern recycling. His comparative framework charts the complex network of business and political actors involved in the development of the reverse vending machine (RVM) and bottle deposit legislation to better understand the different historical trajectories empty beverage containers have taken across markets, including the U.S. The RVM has served as more than a hole in the wall--it began simply as a tool for grocers who had to handle empty refillable glass bottles, but has become a green machine to redeem the empty beverage container, helping both business and consumers participate in environmental actions.
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Making a Green Machine: The Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling

Consider an empty bottle or can, one of the hundreds of billions of beverage containers that are discarded worldwide every year. Empty containers have been at the center of intense political controversies, technological innovation processes, and the modern environmental movement. Making a Green Machine examines the development of the Scandinavian beverage container deposit-refund system, which has the highest return rates in the world, from 1970 to present. Finn Arne Jørgensen investigates the challenges the system faced when exported internationally and explores the critical role of technological infrastructures and consumer convenience in modern recycling. His comparative framework charts the complex network of business and political actors involved in the development of the reverse vending machine (RVM) and bottle deposit legislation to better understand the different historical trajectories empty beverage containers have taken across markets, including the U.S. The RVM has served as more than a hole in the wall--it began simply as a tool for grocers who had to handle empty refillable glass bottles, but has become a green machine to redeem the empty beverage container, helping both business and consumers participate in environmental actions.
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Making a Green Machine: The Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling

Making a Green Machine: The Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling

by Finn Arne Jørgensen
Making a Green Machine: The Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling

Making a Green Machine: The Infrastructure of Beverage Container Recycling

by Finn Arne Jørgensen

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Overview


Consider an empty bottle or can, one of the hundreds of billions of beverage containers that are discarded worldwide every year. Empty containers have been at the center of intense political controversies, technological innovation processes, and the modern environmental movement. Making a Green Machine examines the development of the Scandinavian beverage container deposit-refund system, which has the highest return rates in the world, from 1970 to present. Finn Arne Jørgensen investigates the challenges the system faced when exported internationally and explores the critical role of technological infrastructures and consumer convenience in modern recycling. His comparative framework charts the complex network of business and political actors involved in the development of the reverse vending machine (RVM) and bottle deposit legislation to better understand the different historical trajectories empty beverage containers have taken across markets, including the U.S. The RVM has served as more than a hole in the wall--it began simply as a tool for grocers who had to handle empty refillable glass bottles, but has become a green machine to redeem the empty beverage container, helping both business and consumers participate in environmental actions.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813550879
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 07/11/2011
Series: Studies in Modern Science, Technology, and the Environment
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 208
File size: 2 MB

About the Author


Finn Arne Jørgensen is an associate senior lecturer in history of technology and environment at Umeå University, Sweden. He was awarded the Samuel Eleazar and Rose Tartakow Levinson Prize from the Society for the History of Technology in 2009.

Table of Contents


Chapter 1:  Bottles, Cans, and Everyday Environmentalism

Chapter 2: The Problem of Bottles

Chapter 3: Creating Bottle Infrastructures

Chapter 4:  A World of Bottles

Chapter 5: Can Cultures

Chapter 6: Greening the RVM

Chapter 7: Making Disposables Environmentally Friendly

Chapter 8: Message in a Bottle
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