So many energy and waste flows appear as simple linear progressions, in which energy in an organized and usable form is taken in, used up and processed, and then passed along outwards as waste energy to do what it will as an externality.
We see a dramatic iteration of this pattern in Marx's contrast of the C-M-C circuit, in which there is a circular flow of commodities facilitated by money as joinery, with the M-C-M circuit, in which, through the commodity as joinery, there is a steady accumulation of the money element. Now, in the process of that accumulation, there occurs a polarization in which the steady accrual of highly organized and beneficial energy concentrates among the owners of capital, and then the unwanted and often damaging waste flows are passed downstream and accrue among the dispossessed and what is considered the "background" environment.
What makes the pattern so interesting is that it occurs throughout human history, and in unsustainable societies in particular, and that it is not limited to the operations of capital, though analysis of capital is one way to extrude the contours of this pattern and bring the pattern's form into relief.
We could take the energy and waste flows of massive agricultural operations and even domestic cycles of production as good examples of this general pattern.
What we generally see with large agricultural operations are large masses of homogeneous livestock and plantlife concentrated and managed in a single space, and then the waste flows from those operations are then concentrated and massive and must be managed in turn.
A single cow pie contains some of the nutrients needed for the soil to replenish some of the grass removed through eating, and so the waste is broken down by insects and microorganisms and returned to the soil. A whole mountain of cow dung however changes the landscape itself; indeed, it becomes the landscape, and changes the balance of what lives and dies where it exists.With too much of a single nutrient it burns and kills and smothers anything underneath, and allows for the proliferation of unwanted pathogens, for starters. And then you start getting into animal antibiotics, growth hormones, herbicides, pesticides, artificial fertilizers and etc. and waste management gets much more complicated.
So with a mass of waste, that waste has to go somewhere else and either be dumped or treated, which takes more usable energy. And where it is not being returned to the land itself, the soil must be amended with additional usable energy, typically in the form of artificial fertilizers.
And where outside energy is sought, it must be sought first in the most easily accessible forms, and when those statistically limited forms are depleted, one has to go to less accessible forms and go further out, taking more usable energy. The soil itself, the bare economic "asset" which produces and which can't be ignored as an externality, is now on the verge of complete exhaustion. And life in the surrounding rivers, lakes, and coastal zones go dead from ag runoff and eutrophication.
These issues have steadily become more visible, so they are attempted to be dealt with within the confines of the economic system, or else more energy is put into displacing those problems or concealing them with better PR.
The reality is quite messy. There are attempts to enter these wastes back into usable energy flows using various modern waste management practices, such as the spraying of treated lagoon wastes on grasslands, and through economic channels such as selling the wastes to be used in composts and fertilizers and the like.
But what is economically viable is not only what makes sense in terms of cold hard numbers, as the mainstream economists will condescendingly tell you, but also what the greater mass of society is doing in economic coordination. If the government is putting massive subsidies into fossil fuel production and the growing of certain crops, where is the activity going to go? And further, who are the incumbents, how much inertia do their practices entail, and how much political power and connection do they possess?
It has to make more economic sense to either sell the waste or make use of it on the land, otherwise artificial fertilizer can be bought up to replenish the soil and the wastes go the path of least resistance, say into lagoons, rivers (in the past or when no one is looking), to landfills, etc.
Further, the simple fact of large farm size causes many of these problems to begin with, but this simple fact is a very complicated historical-social product which is still being produced by collective economic activity and reactionary government policy.
We can't blame it all on industrial agriculture - though these problems are an outgrowth of a greater social pattern that typifies industrial production in general. Just consider the domestic sphere and the general treatment of pet wastes and even our own wastes for that matter.
Energy flows like food are trucked in, wastes are trucked out to be treated or dumped, and nary the twain shall meet in the centers of domestic production. Energy inputs and outputs appear as so many branching flows which are pulled inward and which flow outward, stressing the productive center which is still tasked to continuously grow, and so both exploitation and dumping in the periphery is intensified.
