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Pour Me a Cold One: A Cold War History of Beverage Containers

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

This project will compare the controversial environmental history of beverage containers in Cold War USA – home of free enterprise, democracy and the disposable can – with the land of command economy, communism and refillable bottles, the USSR. This research will interpret the complex environmental, technological, social and cultural discourses by environmentalists, industry, and policy makers. It will focus on the complex role of the State, which amidst conflicting interests was to legislate beverage container recycling laws. Since the 1970s, disposable beverage containers became emblems of consumerism and waste, as well as significant contributors to the global environmental crisis. Even though, the environmental impact of disposable beverage containers is understood widely, only a handful of countries developed effective beverage container recycling programs in the past. While the scientific community in environmental-focused social sciences generally agree that liberalism and participatory democracy are essential for effective environmental legislation, the most common and effective efforts to enhance environmental quality have focused on enacting laws that decrease the autonomy of individual actors and increase the power of the state to prescribe suitable behaviours. It is therefore relevant to compare how recycling debates unfolded and systems developed in nations with different political approaches to environmental law.

The project was to discover and produce scientific and popular results of beverage containers on both sides of the Iron Curtain from the perspective of conservation, environmental protection, recycling, wasting, waste generation.

The project uncovered that the system of bottles, as well as objects was not rigid in the Soviet bloc. There was change, but change was both different and slower than in the West. towards consumerism appeared at a significantly slower rate than in the West until the collapse of communism.

It was noted that by the 1980s plastics did not enter production, with the exception of milk products in much of the Soviet bloc. A centrally managed recycling system however slowly sank into a deep crisis as a result of underfunding, lack of investments, rapidly changing and Westernizing material culture and growing competition by private entrepreneurs.

Based on the research project scientific publications were produced as well as numerous social media and video producing output were generated. The project also contributed to a MOOC produced by the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability. Although funding of the project has ended, there is further publications and activities prepared and will be executed in the near future.

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