External Impact-oriented vs Internal Self-oriented environmental action

"Environmentalism without class struggle is just gardening"

Is a quote we hear a lot when discussing political positioning among environmental activists. This sentence is often use to throw shade at environmental figures or institutions that seem to lack a spine in taking a stance the face of tough conflicts of interest involving the environment. This sentence has many implications, but what pronounces itself most loud to me is the base assumption that gardening is inferior--perhaps morally--to the broader meaning of Environmentalism 

The poor gardener unfortunately took a stray. But if we remove the implicit inferiorization of gardening, 

"Environmentalism is like gardening with class-struggle."

We can understand the relationship between the ideas as stages of progression, gardening being the baseline condition for environmentalism to develop, not something entirely different. 

Understanding the relationship between impact oriented cleanups and self oriented cleanups.

I've been recieving comments such as:

"Why do you believe cleaning up alone is better than building a collective initiative to clean up the river faster?"

"If the world is free from trash, would that stress you out?"

These questions fundamentally fail to see the big picture, for one, I never said what I'm doing is better (whatever "better" means). Also, enjoying cleanup is not a deliberate surrending to a sissiphean reality, its a mental reframing to psychologically sustain ourselves in our efforts towards a cleaner world. The journey towards a cleaner world, is like a marathon, and enjoying cleanup is like the small things we encounter along the way that motivate us along the path, not the path itself. 

But what about the collective initiative to clean up the river faster? Lets talk about that.

1. External impact-oriented cleanups. Efforts whose success is measured by the quantifiable impact on the environment that seek to scale need to pay close attention to logistics. When impact becomes an expectation, those who are tasked with delivering that impact need to be paid (and this money has to come from somewhere). This results in a work environment where the people involved are filtered very broadly due to the commonality of economic interest, i.e., no one gives a rat ass how much your soul connects with the environment so long as you displace a certain tonnage of trash per week, you're going to recieve pay. It doesn't matter if you hate yourself doing so, vibe poorly with your co-workers, or want to quit as soon as you recieve enough money to move on to the next thing. Its a very transactional dynamic that although shallow, gets the job done. Or does it? Here are some of the ways professional cleanups can backfire, leading to the perpetuation of the initial mismanagement that caused the pollution:
• Enabling littering
• When people become aware that its someones job to cleanup after their mess, the consequence of littering feels elusive. Outsourcing collective responsibility to a single institution can put a lot of strain on that institution especially since the workload is practically infinite/unbounded.
• Job inertia
•  More dangerously, people will continue to litter believing they are helping workers stay in their job. The people working as cleaners will also encourage & allow people to keep littering because that behavior is what keeps putting food on their table. 
• Greenwashing
• Scaling up operations requires huge capital and this money needs to come from somewhere. We can't expect to reach operational surplus from trading recovered materials alone without spending some time operating at a deficit -- during which we'll need capital injection. The government rarely gives a damn, but corporations, especially the bad guys are usually the most generous; since they would benefit the most from having their brand be known to support environmental action. This is great for short term strategic action, but given the two things I listed before, it can end up being a cycle, in which, the organizations carrying out the cleanups can be seen as profiteering the issue.
• My recommendation: Professional work needs to be excusively applied towards system-based operations. Waste collection, waste sorting, and waste management are all in-system processes that have clear physical boundaries between work and not work (the LTCR, Legal Trash Collection Route). You know when you've entered the MRF, its go time. But outside of the MRF, its not your job to deal with litter. As a garbage collector for example, you should only pick up trash deposited to the designated bins instead of scraping clutter in random areas. By adhering to this, you will force society to take its part instead of continuing to allow society to preserve their messy ways that lead you to more and more unexpected work
2. Internal/Self oriented cleanups. From a systems POV, the responsibility to declutter the environment from litter has to be handed back to the ones who caused it, not oursourced to a professional entity to take care of stuff. This is because to the system, littering is a random occurance in place and time, therefore difficult to build a system around. WE need to be the ones to take initiative, not professionally but as an act of responsibility towards the environment. In terms of logistics, collective efforts need way less capital if the load is distributed throughout the population. It costs way less for 100 people to make a conscious decision not to litter, compared to if you had to pay 5 people cleanup the litter from 95 people. You will still need to pay people to run the LTCR, but not to clean-up. By realizing how the system needs pro-bono community efforts, the challenge then is to create internal motivation to act; as opposed to external motivation (money & instantly apparent impact). The emphasis on internal motivation aims to awaken the realization in people that the positive transformation generated from cleaning up goes both ways. Like pushing an object many times your mass, it will effect you more than it effects the object. 

Going back to the quote, 

 "Environmentalism is like gardening with class-struggle."

Instead of framing it:

"Cleaning up without being paid delivering impact, is just hobby cleaning"

We can frame it:

"Impact oriented cleanups are like hobby cleaning with an added layer of incentive and expectations"

Conclusion

Hobby cleaning is a collective bare minimum that everyone should be doing, professional cleanups should be done strategically as to not create perpetuation/mission creep, and in-system waste management should be professionally carried out with clear set boundaries.