The socio-technical tests and overflows of a cumbersome and toxic industrial mud: from its disposal to its impossible commodification

The production of alumina using the Bayer process generates toxic residues – “the red mud” – which constitute one of the largest volumes of industrial waste in the world. As alumina production increases, so does the volume of toxic residues with no market value. What to do with these production leftovers? How can they be requalified and valorized? In the case studied here at the Gardanne site (Bouches-du-Rhône, France), the industrial operator embarked on a Research & Development program at the turn of the 1990s to requalify and market these muds as a new resource. But making a marketable product out of a pile of toxic mud does not follow a linear process. The commodification strategy developed by the company will have to contend with technical, regulatory, economic, political and territorial constraints. We show that these constraints are interdependent and overlap in the key test faced by the engineers, that of mastering materiality.