R E U T E R S /D A R R IN Z A M M I T LUPI
A bulldozer shifts garbage a t a California landfill.
The average American produces 102 tons of garbage in a lifetime. Edward Humes thinks that’s plenty.
BY M AGGIE TARAN AW A
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
f all the things to study, why study trash?
The late William Rathje, archeologist and
founder of the Garbage Project, probably
heard a similar question many times in his career.
Using a bucket auger to take core samples of
landfills, Rathje and his team unearthed decades of
waste that would have otherwise never seen the
light of day.
Rathje’s Garbage Project also unearthed new
knowledge about what happens to trash once it’s
tossed, what you can determine about a person just
by studying his or her trash, and how good we are
at fooling ourselves about how much healthy food
we eat (our refuse tells the true story).
Author Edward Humes has been studying
garbage, too. His new book, “Garbology: Our Dirty
Love Affair with Trash” (Avery, $27), shows us
mind-bogglingly huge landfills, sobering statistics
(the average American is slated to produce 102
tons of trash in his or her lifetime) and concrete
solutions to our collective wastefulness.
Both Humes and Rathje would probably agree:
Getting to know our trash better, and
understanding where it goes once we toss it, might
United States. It’s not by actually measuring the
be key to making less of it.
amount of trash coming in. It’s a more indirect
method called “indirect flow analysis.” They get
M aggie Taranawa: In your book “Garbology, ”
data from manufacturers about how much material
you mention how the Environmental Protection
they’re making that goes out to consumers. Then,
Agency has underestimated the am ount o f trash that
through various byzantine calculations, they come
Americans produce. Some 140 million tons go
up with a figure of how much trash is theoretically
unaccounted for in its calculations. Why do you think
being made.
this is, and where did you fin d more accurate
They came up with this method decades ago,
statistics?
when there were many more dumps (legal and
illegal) and no one was measuring how much was
Edward Humes: The reason for the
going into them. The current method was the best
underestimation is the method the EPA uses to
they could come up with, and they’ve stuck with it
generate a figure for our municipal waste in the
O
The homecoming
Despite renewed
support fo r voucher
system to house
veterans, numbers
fa ll short
Page 3
ever since. The problem is, we have far fewer
dumps now, and these dumps are meticulous about
measuring how much garbage they take in. Their
business model requires that they charge by the
ton. There are scales when the trucks enter and
leave, and th e y c o m p are th e w eig h t of the full and
empty trucks so they know exactly how much has
been dumped. Because of this we have very good
data.
Columbia University recently partnered with a
trade journal called “BioCycle,” and they started
doing these biannual “State of Garbage in
America” reports that actually use the real data.
They found the missing trash! We’re throwing away
a lot more than the EPA estimates. We’re also
recycling much less. We’re sending about twice as
much garbage to the dump as the EPA suggests.
Last year, Portland
reinforced it’s
reputation as a leader
in recycle and reuse
efforts by banning
most plastic grocery
store bags. (Bags for
produce, meat and
bulk food are still
allowed.) Seattle
adopted a similar ban
that went into effect
just last month. A
statewide proposal
failed in the recent
Oregon Legislature.
The city of Portland
has a declared goal of
raising the recycling
rate to 75 percent by
2015. With steps such
as reducing curbside
pick-ups, consolidating
compost waste and
creating a system for
food scraps, the city
has reduced its
garbage stream by
more than 40 percent,
according to the city.
M.T.: In centuries past, methods such as piggeries
(in which trash was fed to pigs) and incineration were
common methods of waste disposal. When and why
did landfills become the way to dispose of trash?
E.H.: The first landfill and anti-litter campaign
was in ancient Greece about 2,500 years ago. It’s
not a new idea. Shortly before World War II, some
refinements were added. Specifically, the idea of a
“sanitary landfill,” where you cover the waste with
dirt every day to suppress the odor and vermin.
It’s been further refined since the 1980s and early
1990s by placing plastic liners underneath to
prevent the seepage of toxic waste into
groundwater supplies.
Of course, this was a big improvement over
throwing garbage just anywhere. Cities were a mess
for centuries. People would just hurl trash out their
windows into the street or alleys. New York City
Oregon’s great
health care experiment
See TRASH , page 9
Death by plastic
This month the state puts $240 million
on the line with coordinated care
Where does all our
plastic go? Into the
mouths o f albatross
Page 4
Page 8