Household Recycling as Conscious Consumption: Exploring Meaning and Practice in the United Arab Emirates

• In Event: Sustainability, Climate, and the Politics of Consumption

Abstract

As the world’s population grows, waste management has become an increasingly relevant topic. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), having built consumption into its social fabric, has among the highest per-capita rates of municipal solid waste in the world, and is now turning towards recycling as a tool to minimize landfill waste. Recycling is often conceptualized as a pro-environmental behavior (PEB), however, in the highly heterogeneous, non-Western context of the UAE, the possibility exists that unreflexively applying environmental motives is imprecise, mistaken, or outright exclusionary. This study resituates recycling as an act of conscious consumption, underlain by environmental and/or social motives, as proposed by Willis and Schor (2012). Using a nationwide quantitative survey of adults with Arab, Emirati, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Western origins (n=770), this paper reveals that, though recycling is nascent in the nation, 80% of residents have some experience with household recycling and otherwise feel highly ready and motivated to participate. It is also concluded that, while the environment is the primary benefactor of recycling practice, there is nuance, which may be culturally derived, in how recycling's social contributions are regarded and experienced. This study preliminarily indicates that automatic categorization of recycling as a pro-environmental behavior has potential to overshadow its socially-derived motives and outcomes. Instead, a broader umbrella of conscious consumption would encourage recycling’s multifaceted meanings to be studied and further linked to common themes of consumption, including social life, identity, and institutional structures.

Author

• Christine Hecht, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi