Dickens' Great Expectations of waste, Part 2

Having set out the characters in yesterday's blog, it is time to try to try for the telling of the story of the waste industry through the prism of Great Expectations. To be specific, it can be read to tell the story of the waste industry’s aspirations for waste processing.

The industry starts, as might be expected, basically. It is close to the people, and does not aspire to greatness nothwithstanding the sophistication off in the distance. This is seen as unattainable.

The comes a point in time, however, when the industry is permitted to glimpse the unattainable high society. In the book, this is Pip spending time in Miss Haversham’s home where he meets and falls in love with Estella. In the waste industry, it is more commonly an international study trip with all of the requisite inspections of highly complex plants. The point is, the industry begins to believe that grandeur is the way forward, and begins to desire some of the most complex waste plants going (represented in the book by Estella).

It is then somewhere around here that things get interesting. The grand plants start to gain traction, and the industry believes that this is due to the support of the grand old world. Elevation to the vaulted realm of waste processing grandeur seems to be gifted. Whether the gift be from government or multinationals is immaterial – it seems that the decrepit old world is pulling the local industry up.

And so it runs along. The waste industry acts as if it already has the grandeur it has been promised, and proceeds to implement plans for its new amazing waste processing plant. All looks marvellous.

Eventually, however, there comes a time when the industry learns that this new plant is actually not being built with old money at all, but rather it is a bit less dignified and more hard won. It is the drive and spirit of the entrepreneur, barely given any credibility in the face of the supposed support of multinationals and government. Or, to put it a little differently, the old money sneering at the nouveau riche who have, in fact, underpinned the entire world that the Establishment lives off.

It gets worse. It turns out that the supposed supporters of this new initiative are not there at all, and that they are in fact out to destroy the true backers. Governments will look to shut down new plants at the first sniff of trouble. The established players will wave around new alternatives that seem credible enough to convince others that current plans are reckless, that the real path to grandeur lies elsewhere. And so the industry ends up destitute and near death, bled dry having attempted to achieve great things.

The waste industry ends up destitute and near death

The only person to save the industry from this path is, as always, the public. It is the public that saves the industry from its follies.  It is the public that pays off the industry’s debts. It is the public that nurses the industry back to health. And the cycle continues with another wave of aspiration for grandeur, another wave of delusion and collapse.

It's all very bleak, but need not be thus. Not wanting to be seen to be fishing for clicks, but I will leave that to a final installment tomorrow. The story does not need to play out this way. With appropriately "nuanced" interpretation, the tale of Great Expectations can give some clues as to how the industry can avoid Pip's fate.