Fact Versus Conjecture in the History of Industrial Waste Utilization

Christine Meisner Rosen

Econ Journal Watch, 2012, vol. 9, issue 2, 112-121

Abstract: This piece is a response to Pierre Desrochers’s criticism of an article by me. This response challenges Desrochers’s argument that market forces compelled nineteenth- and early twentieth-century manufacturers to recycle, voluntarily, the vast majority of their wastes. I argue that Desrochers provides no counter-evidence that disproves my findings and that he bases some of his criticism on conjecture that is factually inaccurate and/or overly simplistic. I conclude that to do justice to this important and complex subject, historians need to investigate the barriers that discouraged manufacturers from using their wastes, as well as the full range of regulatory as well as market-based drivers that encouraged them to do so.

Keywords: Industrial ecology; inter-firm recycling; loop closing; by-products; resource conservation; pollution regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q0 Q01 Q2 Q28 Q38 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:9:y:2012:i:2:p:112-121

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