Rubbish, entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

One of the secrets of the universe is buried in the word rubbish. The word itself is secretive: no one knows its precise provenance. The big OED says: ‘Of obscure origin app. related in some way to rubble.’ But if you look up rubble, it says: ‘Of obscure origin, app. related in some way to rubbish.’ Dirt is matter in the wrong place. Rubbish is matter in the wrong place but on a larger scale. Getting it into the right place is beginning to perplex governments as never before. The earliest general attempt in English history to deal with the problem can be found in the Parliament Roll for 1392–93: ‘Qu nulle …gette ne mette …ascuns fymes, ordures, mukes, rubbawes ou lastage in la dite eloe entre les lieux sus dites.’ Leaving aside the dreadful legal French, the law is hopeless because it merely tells you where not to put it. What should you do? Burn it? Bury it? That is what we have been doing, not so much ourselves, but by delegation to local authorities. All very well for Edmund Blunden to write:

By mysterious law each place
Where nature looks most gentle and glad
Attracts the rubbish dumping race

But in fact the entire human race has this propensity, and always has had, as archaeologists know to their delight.

One way of looking at it is to use physics, or more particularly the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This lays down that the entropy of a closed system can never decrease. In practice this means the energy is conserved but degraded into less ordered and convenient forms. Rubbish-creation is a form of entropy. Consumption goods are produced, marketed, bought and even used in an orderly fashion. Then the products of use and what remains unusable become disorderly — rubbish.