Decay as a mode of biogas production: Digestive assemblages and value creation through microbial work

Abstract

Decay is usually understood as a process in which things break down, rot, and ruin. At first glance, the idea of decay is rather alien to our understanding of productive activity. In the context of the circular economy, however, the process of decomposition is harnessed as a tool of production through the anaerobic digestion of biowaste. In this process, waste turns into energy and nutritious fertilizer. This article studies decay as a mode of production in the context of the circular economy transition by focusing on more-than-human waste work carried out by microbes. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two Finnish biogas plants and interview material collected in Finland and Sweden. The article draws from the concepts of encounter value, marketization and digestive assemblages and studies how value is produced in three different phases of break down: biowaste, slurry, and digestate. It investigates the paradox of value creation and ruination, and aims to enrich the concept of production in the context of the circular economy through the introduction of decay as a value-producing process based on microbial work. Our analysis illustrates how the things produced in the process are not always desirable and how creating economic value for the end products of the biogas process is a volatile endeavor. Through our analysis, we argue that while the logic of the circular economy enables celebrating decay as a mode of capitalist production, the value produced through decay is still not necessarily mainly economic but, rather, symbolic.