Post-Materialist Waste: A Study of Turkey’s Importation of Rubbish

Focusing on the case of Turkey's rubbish importation, this article examines the discrepancy between Turkey's importation of foreign rubbish and its national agenda to become a zero-waste society. Drawing upon the sixth (2012) wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) conducted in Turkey, analysis has identified a noted shift in the social values respondents hold, indicating a shift from traditional strong-economy values, known as materialist values, and the emergent environmentally-friendly values, known as post-materialist values. Most of the Turkish population shares concerns for both types of values, while a growing Turkish minority holds post-materialist values. The analysis draws on chi-square tests, which indicate that a shift towards post-materialist values has produced prioritizing environmental concerns over the strength of the economy among this sample. Rather than pursuing a waste-free society due to a rubbish apocalypse, the results indicate that further development in the Turkish economy will facilitate further shifts toward post-materialism, in which context the population would become increasingly positive toward waste refurbishment and other environmental concerns.