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Victorian Pioneers of Corporate Sustainability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Pierre Desrochers
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Extract

Historical scholarship on business—environment interactions has largely sidestepped the study of corporate innovations that had both economic and environmental benefits. This issue is examined through late-nineteenth-century initiatives sponsored by the British Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, whose aim was to document and promote the creation of profitable by-products out of polluting industrial waste and emissions. A case is made that the individuals involved in this effort not only anticipated concepts and debates now at the heart of the modern sustainable development literature, but also that their work questions some fundamental premises of this discourse.

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Business History Review , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , Winter 2009 , pp. 703 - 729
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Copyright © Harvard Business School 2009

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References

1 Most of these contributions deal with rubbish (domestic waste), sewage and, to a lesser extent, air pollution (caused by both industrial activities and domestic heating and lighting). On domestic waste recovery, see, among others, Strasser, Susan, Waste and Want (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; and O'Brien, Martin, Crisis of Waste (New York, 2008).Google Scholar On air and water pollution, recent additions include Debora Spar and Krysztof Bebenek, “To the Tap: Public versus Private Water Provision at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” in this issue of the Review, Garwood, Christine, “Green Crusaders or Captives of Industry? The British Alkali Inspectorate and the Ethics of Environmental Decision Making, 1864–1895,” Annals of Science 61, no. 1 (2004): 99–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamlin, Christopher, “The City as a Chemical System? The Chemist as Urban Environmental Professional in France and Britain, 1780–1880,” Journal of Urban History 33, no. 5 (2007): 702–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pontin, Ben, “Integrated Pollution Control in Victorian Britain: Rethinking Progress within the History of Environmental Law,” Journal of Environmental Law 19, no. 2 (2007): 173–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Thorsheim, Peter, Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke and Culture in Britain since 1800 (Columbus, Oh., 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 This does not imply, of course, that domestic waste recovery was not widespread and economically significant at the time. Recent historical work on industrial by-product development can be found in special issues of Progress in Industrial Ecology 3, no. 4 (2006) and Enterprise and Society 8, no. 2 (2007).

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12 Royal Society of Arts, Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London, 1852).Google Scholar This essay was reprinted several times in the following years in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

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15 Different types of coal gas were obtained as the result of processes that converted coal into combustible gases and other substances. It was mostly used as a fuel and illuminant until the advent of electric lighting and natural gas led to its demise, while coal-gas residuals would later be mostly replaced by petroleum-refining residues.

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22 Greysmith, David, “The Empire as Infinite Resource: The Work of P. L. Simmonds (1814–1897),” Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History 6, no. 1 (1990): 6.Google Scholar

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30 Waste Products, 6. It is unclear whether Simmonds had been awarded this premium to write his 1859 article or the first edition of Waste Products.

31 Ibid., iii. Simmonds's remarks read as follows: “To the Council of the Society of Arts, before whom the subject treated of in this work has been frequently discussed, and who have awarded the author the Society's medal for his paper on undeveloped products, and more re cently elected him an honorary life member, this work is gratefully dedicated by their obliged and obedient servant.”

32 Ibid., vi.

33 Ibid., 2.

34 Ibid., v.

35 Ibid., iii.

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41 This broad classification permeates his work and can probably be traced back to both common sense and the Prince Consort and the 1851 Commissioners. See Burton, Anthony, Visionand Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1999), 45.Google Scholar

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43 Ibid., 477.

44 Ibid., 4.

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49 Support for the former perspective can be found in the work published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, while arguments in support of the latter are often expressed in the publications of the U.K. Department for Business, Enterprise and Reg ulatory Reform.

50 Playfair, Lyon, Subject of Social Welfare (London, 1889), 269.Google Scholar

51 Simmonds, , Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances, 4.Google Scholar

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55 Ibid., 10–11.

56 See Desrochers, Pierre, “Did the Invisible Hand Need a Regulatory Glove to Develop a Green Thumb? Some Historical Perspective on Market Incentives, Win-Win Innovations and the Porter Hypothesis,” Environmental and Resource Economics 41, no. 4 (2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Ayres, Robert U. and Ayres, Leslie W., A Handbook of Industrial Ecology (Cheltenham, U.K., 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Of course, “nightsoil” and other urban wastes had long been collected profitably in many parts of the world, while trained chemists were by then thoroughly familiar with Antoine Lavoisier's notion that “Nothing is lost” and Justus von Liebig's “chemical metamorphosis” and “materials cycling.” Playfair, however, was probably the first successful popularizer of the industrial-ecology metaphor to refer to interindustrial links. For some historical perspective on societal metabolism and von Liebig, see Fischer-Kowalski, Marina, “Society's Metabolism: The Intellectual History of Materials Flow Analysis, Part 1,1860–1970,” Journal of Industrial Ecology 2, no. 1 (1998): 61–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischer-Kowalski, Marina and Hüttler, Walter, “Society's Metabolism: The Intellectual History of Materials Flow Analysis, Part II, 1970–1998,” Journal of Industrial Ecology 2, no. 4 (1998): 61–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mårald, Erland, “Everything Circulates: Agricultural Chemistry and Recycling Theories in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Environment and History 8, no. 1 (2002): 65–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hamlin, Christopher, “The City as a Chemical System? The Chemist as Urban Environmental Professional in France and Britain, 1780–1880,” Journal of Urban History 33, no. 5 (2007): 702–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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61 Simmonds, , Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances, 1–2.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., 10.

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64 Nursey, Perry Fairfax, “The Economic Use of Blast-Furnace Slag,” Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine 12 (1875): 401–9.Google Scholar See also Anonymous, Review of “Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances by Simmonds, Peter Lund,” Popular Science Review 2 (1863): 254–58Google Scholar; and Desrochers, Pierre, “Learning from History or from Nature, or Both? Recycling Networks and their Metaphors in Early Industrialization,” Progress in Industrial Ecology 2, no. 1 (2005): 19–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for other contemporary uses of this metaphor.

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67 Burton's, Anthony verdict in his Vision and Accident: The Story of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1999), 121–22Google Scholar, is generally negative, while a contemporary source like Anonymous, , “Sight-seeing in Bethnal Green,” All the Year Round (1872): 228–32Google Scholar, reports good attendance in the Museum on the day of his visit in the year of its opening.

68 Aschmann, F. T., “Notes on the Bethnal Green Museum, London,” School of Mines Quarterly 2 (1881): 72.Google Scholar

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78 The view that the Chinese and Japanese were much better recyclers of organic waste, especially of sewage, seems to have been widespread among European writers at the time. See Mårald, , “Everything Circulates,” 65–84Google Scholar; Wynter, Andrew, “The Use of Refuse” Quarterly Review 124 (1868): 335.Google Scholar This lengthy essay by Wynter was also printed in Every Saturday and the London Quarterly Review and later reprinted in Wynter, Andrew, Curiosities of Toil and Other Papers (London, 1870).Google Scholar

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87 Daily papers include the Daily News, the Observer, and the Standard. Broad periodicals include All the Year Round, the British Almanac, the various iterations of the Chambers's Journal, Good Words, the Quarterly Review, and the Saturday Review. More specialized outlets include the Journal of the Society of Arts, the Manufacturer and Builder, the Mining Journal, Nature, and the Popular Science Review. Perhaps the lengthiest and most detailed reviews of Simmonds's, work are to be found in the Popular Science Review 2 (1863): 254–58Google Scholar; in Wynter's, Andrew “The Use of Refuse,” Quarterly Review 124 (1868): 334–57Google Scholar; and in the Chambers's Journal 546 (1874): 369–71. Wynter, Andrew, “The Use of Waste Substances,” Good Words for 1876 (1876): 155–60Google Scholar, is a lengthy review essay of the third edition of Waste Products, which does not give Simmonds full credit for the information listed in the paper.

88 Anonymous, , “What's the Use of That?” All the Year Round 8 (1862): 186.Google Scholar

89 Anonymous, Review of “Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances by Simmonds, Peter Lund,” Popular Science Review 2 (1863): 258.Google Scholar

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97 Simmonds, , Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances, iii-iv.Google Scholar His 1869 article simi larly discusses the influence of his earlier writings on the topic.

98 Simmonds, , “The Production and Uses of Cotton-Seed Oil,” 249.Google Scholar

99 Contemporary obituaries and biographical entries on Simmonds can be found in, among other outlets, the American Journal of Pharmacy, A Supplement to Allibone's Criti cal Dictionary of English Literature, the Athenæum, Dansk Biografisk Lexikon, Diction naire universel des contemporains, the Freemason, the Journal of the Society of Art, and Men and Women of the Time.

100 Suessengut, Otto, Die Industrie der Abfallstoffe (Leipzig, Germany, 1879).Google Scholar

101 Blaikie, William Garden, Better Days for Working People (London, 1881), 130.Google Scholar

102 Muspratt was a chemist by training and one of the heirs of a then prominent Liverpool family. See Stephens, Michael D. and Roderick, Gordon W., “The Muspratts of Liverpool,” Annals of Science 29, no. 3 (1972): 282–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

103 Kershaw, John B. C., The Recovery and Use of Industrial and Other Waste (London, 1928), vii.Google Scholar

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105 Greysmith, , “The Empire as Infinite Resource,” 3–15.Google Scholar Simmonds's letter was part of a mass-mailing effort, but it seems likely that Marx visited Simmonds's waste exhibit.

106 Crookes, William, “Chemical Products,” 58.Google Scholar

107 The original reference is in Jevons, William Stanley, The Principles of Economics (London, 1905), 28–9Google Scholar, in a subsection on “successive utilization.”

108 The original query (6 June 1918) and Lehfeldt's reply (12 June 1918) can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum Registry's “Bethnal Green Museum, Waste Products Collection, 1874–1928” file.

109 Koller, Theodor, The Utilization of Waste Products, 3rd rev. ed., transi, from the 2nd rev. German ed. (New York, 1918)Google Scholar; Razous, Paul, Les déchets et sous-produits industriels (Paris, 1905)Google Scholar; Kershaw, The Recovery and Use of Industrial and Other Waste; Lipsett, Charles H., Industrial Waste and Salvage: Conservation and Utilization (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

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112 Part of the RSA's 2005 manifesto states that its goal is to “develop mutually reinforcing policies, products, technologies behaviours and lifestyle that reduce waste of all kinds, with zero waste as the long term ideal.”