https://mronline.org/2025/09/22/let-them-eat-plastic/
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In her thought-provoking blog, Celiwe Mxhalisa shines light on how capitalism has moved beyond exploiting natural resources to commodifying its own waste and pollution.
In her thought-provoking blog, Celiwe Mxhalisa shines light on how capitalism has moved beyond exploiting natural resources to commodifying its own waste and pollution. This shift has created a new form of exploited labour, termed “counter-productive labour,” exemplified by recycle-for-pay activities that extract value from the dross of capitalist production. Mxhalisa views this new exploitation as a harbinger of doom, intensifying the incoherence of a system that produces more rubbish than goods in the name of profit.
The figure towering over the horizon that wraps around the centre of Soshanguve township, north of Pretoria, South Africa, is neither hill nor mountain. It’s a landfill site. A few years ago, this mammoth mound of trash was more manageable (though by no means small) and didn’t protrude above the houses surrounding it the way it does now. Comprised of rubbish and rubble, it was constructed right in front of a secure care centre and should have been dismantled years ago.
It is hardly an anomaly, as you can find similar figures—with similarly worrisome town planning and prolonged existence—in other South African townships.
“The people who live around landfill sites breathe more microplastics and methane than they do clean air,” you must be thinking,
They must have called for their removal by now.
While such calls abound, they remain unheeded. But curiously, there is also a divergent demand coming from these places: a call for the landfill sites to be kept in place. This may seem odd, until one understands that these landfill sites have become an important source of sustenance for some people.
When people say that capitalism has matured, they mean that it has reached a new, more advanced stage. It’s older and bigger now. It is in its “late-stage”. Having outgrown (or rather, no longer being satiated by) the more “traditional” aspects of economic life, it now eats new, modern things like credit lines and stock holdings.
But what if we started thinking of capitalism’s maturation as more than just development? What if maturing—over and above referring to a “new”, more advanced step in its development (or degeneration, depending on who you ask)—could mean a closer step towards expiration or rather its consumption of that which has expired?
A similarly timely concept is environmental (in)justice. Generally, environmental injustice refers to the fact that the negative consequences of climate change disproportionately affect marginalised people, communities and countries, despite them being seldom to blame for the climate crisis. Environmental justice, then, is the quest to alleviate this issue.
But what could this disproportionate allotment of negative consequence reveal about the development (expiration!) of capitalism? By this I don’t mean to reiterate the claim that capitalism has reached the end of its utility. I mean that capitalism—developed, matured and in need of more kilojoules—has turned towards eating rubbish because food is no longer enough to sustain it.
Put differently, the developing economies centred around recycling and protecting people against pollution form part of a “new”, distinct pillar of late-stage capitalism that operates “below” ground instead of “above” it. So, what does this development tell us about both environmental justice and eco-capitalism?
This piece argues that while the traditional view is that capitalism exploits natural resources, recent developments show that even the dross of production is capable of exploitation. There are thus three mutually constituting forms of value to be extracted: productive and reproductive value “above” and a “new” counter-productive value “below”. The article will consider how this exploitation occurs with reference to three forms of pollution (air, water and land) across the African continent, with South Africa as its primary area of consideration.
The piece is divided into three sections. The first section will focus on one of the contradictions of capitalism and explain how this manifests in eco-capitalism. It will then define and distinguish between productive, reproductive and “counter-productive” labour. After that, it will show the difference between counter-productive labour and the exploitation of productive labour reliant on the climate crisis for its existence. It will conclude by considering where counter-productive labour fits into the (eco-)capitalist crisis.
Eco-capitalism and her pillars
A) Productive, reproductive, unproductive and a secret fourth form of labour
In the classical Marxist tradition, labour is thought to be either productive or reproductive. Productive labour (or useful labour) produces capital. Examples include the actual mining done by a gold miner and research conducted by a legal analyst. Reproductive labour is the work that takes place outside of the workplace in order to sustain or produce workers. This can happen literally, through childbirth, and includes the worker’s personal grooming and cooking and cleaning at home.
When sculpting the notion of productive labour, Marx distinguished it from unproductive labour, which is only exchanged for income as opposed to capital (Ian Gough, Marx’s Theory of Productive and Unproductive Labour). I argue that there is a fourth form of labour, which may have existed during the 18th century but definitely exists today: counter-productive labour.
Counter-productive labour is, in a sense, a misnomer that could be likened to the ideas of “unskilled”, “semi-skilled” and “skilled” labour. All labour is skilled labour. What creates the distinction between these forms of labour has more to do with how we value the work done—socially and economically—than the actual skill required to do the work.
On the social front, for instance, prestige or (in)accessibility can be equated to skill. Consider how we view the work of a lawyer as opposed to that of a domestic worker. Economically, the relations of wage-labour and capital require that the salaries of mineworkers be kept much lower than those of a mine boss. Arbitrary notions of skill are used to justify this discrepancy. The social and economic valuation of work, then, result in a newly-minted accountant obtaining a higher salary than a plumber who has been working for more than 30 years (perhaps without proper licensing), despite the latter’s cumulative skill outweighing that of the latter.
In a similar vein, “counter-productive” labour should not be thought of as a labour that does nothing. It is labour based on the undoing of something that has already been produced. So, recycling-for-pay is counter-productive not because it does nothing, but because it operates from the opposite side of production by extracting value from something that has already been produced (for example, a tin) so that it can be deconstructed (that is, reversing production or unproduced) for pay.
Of course, it is possible to argue that the recycling “produces” capital (and is thus productive) but this argument is easily disputed when one understands that “production” in this sense does not a) use raw materials in order to create something new (as is the case with primary production) or b) operate for the purpose of capital, but in order to make an income.
Counter-production uses old materials in order to create something raw and the counter-producers seldom (if ever) have the means of production. Hence, tin is recycled to create raw materials which will then be used to create new tins. The counter-producers pick waste in order to sell that which they have accumulated to a recycling depot. Their primary function is to make an income from the sale of recyclable materials. These people aren’t employees or contractors in the true sense of either word. An exploration into who they are in relation to the recycling depot would be better dealt with elsewhere. For now, they will be referred to as counter-producers.
It is important to understand that counter-productive, unproductive, productive and reproductive labour are not mutually exclusive. Truly, they usually work in tandem or are, at least, reliant on the functioning of the other. There can’t be a beer bottles for recycling if someone didn’t produce alcohol (productive labour). Some waste pickers rely on the refuse bags people leave outside for rubbish collection (reproductive labour) to source cans. The work counter-producers do is geared at producing an income (unproductive labour).
B) Eco-capitalism: a contradiction defined
In Green Capitalism, Ivan Scales defines eco-capitalism (the equivalent of “green capitalism) as the attempt to make capitalism operate in a way that reduces harmful environmental practices. In reality, eco-capitalism has meant little more than companies buying carbon credits so as to create the false impression that they have reduced their carbon emissions. Both the parameters and positive impact of capitalism’s attempt to reduce environmental harm are painfully limited.
Capitalism has a wide array of contradictions. For present purposes, the most important contradiction (as theorised in Karl Marx’s Wage-Labour and Capital) relates to the fact that capitalists wish to make increased profits whilst decreasing wages. To do this, they embrace mechanisation, which allows them to retrench workers and/or keep their wages low. While this is likely to increase profits, this results in a crisis since people can no longer afford goods and services as the supply of the latter far outweighs the former’s (ability to) demand.
But regardless of this contradiction, the rubbish produced during and following production outweighs the number of things produced, if not in terms of quantity, then in terms of time. For instance, the boxes and packaging used by certain companies sometimes quantitatively weigh more than the actual pair of sunglasses in a box. On the other hand, while the chocolate in a wrapper weighs more than the actual plastic, the latter will outlive the former thousands of years over.
So, there is a uniquely environmental contradiction nestled in (eco-)capitalism: it produces more “unusable” substances than it does goods intended for use, whether or not it is in crisis. Even if eco-capitalism did manage to fulfil its very narrow goals, it is incapable of adequately alleviating the sheer volume of pollution that it produces, not just from production but from post-production and post-consumption.
What this means is that if we were to conduct a historical analysis of how many goods capitalism has produced in relation to the rubbish it has made (including not just recyclable materials, but also unusable bricks from bombs dropped during wars, unusable vessels, undrinkable water, fields so leeched of nutrients that they can no longer produce a green thing and so on), we would find that the latter far outweighs the former.
Soshanguve township is experiencing an increase in dumping sites. (Credit: TPM MEDIA)
Counter-productive labour v climate crisis productive labour
Capitalism exists against the backdrop of climate crisis. Africa is facing the consequences of climate change and global warming, at a rate that is not consummate with our negative impact on the environment. As the continent continues to grapple with these ripple effects, new industries that explicitly capitalise on decay are blooming.
It is very important to distinguish between companies that have recently developed in order to capitalise on the climate crisis and counter-productive labour.
The former employ productive labour, which can be described as climate crisis productive labour. It is used in, amongst others, the companies that sell protective equipment to shield people from smog and the bottled water and water purification industry. But far from simply employing climate crisis productive labour, this industry involves the production of capital from environmental injustice. This industry cannot exist without environmental injustice. An obvious example of this is the entire carbon offsetting industry. In South Africa, it includes water crises caused by water infrastructure destroyed at the hands of the profiteering “water mafia”. It could cause a boom in the biogas industry in Nigeria, as a countermeasure for the fatal air pollution in the country.
Counter-productive labour, on the other hand, is in and of itself, incapable of being productive labour. As indicated above, it is reliant on the dross of productive labour for its existence. The most obvious example of counter-productive labour is the recycling-for-pay model. From South Africa to Kenya, Zimbabwe to Sierra Leone and Morrocco to Angola, waste picking (also referred to as informal waste management) has become a common practice across the continent. So multitudinous are these counter-producers, that they have established numerous waste picking organisations over the past few decades.
At face value, this may seem like a positive development. However, that which lies below the surface spells disaster.
(Eco-)capitalism’s crisis
People critical of eco-capitalism in particular and capitalism more broadly tend to argue that the former is insufficient for its fixation on individuals as opposed to corporations for the resolution of the climate crisis.
“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” says the multi-national corporations that have pumped Nigeria’s rivers with oils, want to kill thriving marine ecosystems in order to mine off-shore oil in South Africa’s wild coast and in whose honour the Kenyan government wishes to construct an unwanted and unnecessary coal plant.
The anti-(eco-)capitalist rolls their eyes and points out that: “There are millionaires and billionaires with carbon footprints the size of small, Global Southern nations. My plastic straw isn’t the reason why we are barrelling towards the Anthropocene Epoch.”
These anti-(eco-)capitalists are correct. My intention is not to dispute their claim, so much as it is to point out that the new—not “core”, although I do believe that it is becoming increasingly important—crisis of eco-capitalism isn’t the fact that it individualises systemic issues, but that it is also commodifying and capitalising on this individualisation through both counter-productive labour and climate crisis productive labour.
Eco-capitalism looks upon the contradiction I constructed in the first section (capitalism produces more rubbish than goods in the long-run) and creates the fiction that individuals can solve this contradiction.
Counter-productive labour, rather than constitute a “win” for eco-capitalism (a substantial means of off-setting the destruction of environment for profit) could be a harbinger of doom. As more and more companies turn towards extracting counter-productive labour, the call for people to “reuse and reduce” will quieten as “recycle! It’s the new side-hustle” grows louder. It could justify increased production based on the idea that both product and dross are capable of commodification.
Of course, the capitalist class may continue to march forth in their climate disaster denialism, armed with forest offsets the world over. But, however minute, there is a possibility of counter-productive labour extraction ballooning. Either way, the contradictions of capitalism remain and, with it, the need to not only imagine but bring forth alternatives.
Celiwe Mxhalisa holds the degree LLB and is currently pursuing an LLM (Law and Political Justice) at the University of Pretoria. Most of her research is concerned with the law’s historical and contemporary interaction with politics.
Soshanguve township is experiencing an increase in dumping sites. (Credit: TPM MEDIA)
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