The two-day international workshop will bring together different perspectives on recycling in the Cold War era. It aims at a broader understanding of how capitalist and socialist recycling models were formed, developed, and interacted across historical contexts – including continuities, ruptures, and their impact on global and regional material flows. Our keynote speaker is Zsuzsa Gille with a talk on “Recycling in the Socialocene.”
Recycling in the Cold War Era: Capitalist and Socialist Waste Regimes
Throughout most of human history, waste and its reuse have played a central role in economic activity. During the Cold War, rivalry between the Eastern and Western blocs extended beyond the arms race and ideological confrontation. Competition for economic and technological supremacy also encompassed waste recycling - shaping resource flows, production and consumption systems, and later, environmental protection. In both capitalist and socialist economies, recycling was integral to resource governance, embedded in efforts toward efficiency, self-sufficiency, modernization, and international leadership.
While waste studies have grown rapidly, they have focused more on discarding than on recycling and related issues such as reprocessing waste into recyclates and integrating them into production flows. This workshop will therefore explore waste recycling during the Cold War in greater detail. It will examine the actors, practices, and material streams of recycling in both socialist and capitalist regimes, addressing questions such as: What differences and similarities can be identified in actors, materials, practices, technologies, or symbolic meanings? Was recycling driven by ideological confrontation, or was it more often a pragmatic response to shortages, technological challenges, or environmental concerns? What regional specifics can be observed? How did different regimes influence or learn from one another? And in what cases did asymmetrical waste trade between blocs shape recycling schemes?
The workshop explores how Cold War recycling reflected and shaped civic culture, ideology, and policy in different systems. It inquires the role of different actors (e.g. state and municipal authorities, industrial enterprises, trade unions, international organizations, schools, households) in shaping recycling practices and the symbolic meanings of waste within the bipolar world order.
Programme
July 9
09:00–09:30 – Registration
PANEL 1. Everyday Life, Consumption, and Thrift
09:30–12:30
Izabela Desperak, University of Lodz
Privatization of Waste in the Polish People’s Republic: The Invisible Role of Individuals in an Economy of Scarcity
Maaike Janson, University of Amsterdam
United for a Better Consumer Society: The Battle over Glass Bottles and Carton Packaging in the Netherlands during the 1980s
10:50–11:10 – Coffee Break
Henry Irving, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom
Between Market and State: Community Recycling Schemes in the UK, c. 1974–2003
Mateja Habinc, University of Ljubljana
Socialist Commission Shops in Slovenia and Slovakia: Shortages, Modernisation, Commodification and Social (In)Equality
PANEL 2. Domestic and Industrial Recycling Practices
14:00–17:00
Gleb Kazakov, University of Giessen
The Life of a Soviet Bottle: State Planning, Everyday Reuse, and the Shadow Economy of Soviet Bottle Recycling
Olav S. F. Hofland, University of Amsterdam
Pigs, Planners, and Potato Peels: The Soviet Scheme to Feed Pigs with Urban Food Waste as a Waste Regime under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev
15:20–15:40 – Coffee Break
Jiří Janáč, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Recycling and Reuse in the Management of Socio-Ecological Change: The Case of Late Socialist Czechoslovakia
Kati Toivanen, University of Helsinki
The “Scrap War” in the Early 1970s Finnish Scrap Recycling Industry
July 10
09:00–10:00
Keynote Lecture
Zsuzsa Gille
Recycling in the Socialocene
10:00–10:20 – Coffee Break
PANEL 3. Transnational Contexts and Cooperations
10:20–12:30
Karolina Partyga, Columbia University in the City of New York
Fighting for Scrap: Polish Efforts to Import Scrap Metal and the Division of Europe, 1947–1950
Etienne Dufour, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Laboratoire CRIEG-REGARDS (EA6292)
Promoting the Recycling of Organic Waste into Fertilizers: The Activity of the International Research Group on Refuse Disposal (IRGRD), 1955–1970
Adam Przywara, Universität Basel
Cheap Housing as a Global Waste Regime? Cementing Industrial Waste in Socialist and Capitalist Construction
PANEL 4. Social Recycling and Ideology
14:00–15:20
Viktor Pal, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
Marcin Szymański, University of Lodz, Poland
Recycling Systems in Socialist Hungary and Poland: Ideological Foundations and Practical Realities in Cold War Waste Regimes
Cringuta Irina Pelea, Titu Maiorescu University
Children, Pedagogies of Recycling, and Forced Labor: School-Based Collection in Romania and the Socialist Bloc
15:20–15:45 – Coffee Break
15:45–16:00
Concluding Remarks
Heike Weber, TU Berlin
Recycling in the Cold War Era: Insights from the Workshop and the Case of East and West Berlin
If you wish to join, please send an informal registration to kontakt@technikgeschichte.tu-berlin.de. The workshop is expected to take place in room FH 420 (Fraunhoferstraße 33).