Trashing the Planet: Examining Our Global Garbage Glut
TRASHY TERMS In general the term garbage refers to our weekly household refuse including food waste food containers and wastepaper The term trash usually refers to junk materials such as old furniture and unwanted household items In this book we use the two terms interchangeably along with terms such as junk refuse and debris the trash When toys and electric appliances break many people simply toss them and buy new ones It’s easy and cheap to do so On a global scale humans create around 2 6 trillion pounds 1 2 trillion kilograms of garbage a year In the face of the garbage crisis the United States other wealthy nations and local governments around the world are trying to contain the accumulation of trash Many cities run recycling programs collecting plastic glass and metal containers old newspapers magazines and scrap paper and cardboard The cities sell recycled materials to businesses that turn them into new containers fresh sheets of paper and even products such as park benches Even so Americans recycle only about 30 percent of their trash every year In the United States trash put out for curbside pickup rather than recycling usually goes to landfills or incinerators where the trash is either buried under layers of soil or burned However the rotting garbage in landfills frequently leaks toxic liquids that can seep into and poison groundwater Garbage-burning incinerators release toxic gases through their smokestacks polluting the air we breathe In many poor nations cities have no curbside trash or recycling programs at all There people simply pile garbage onto gigantic heaps outside burn it or dump it into local rivers ANCIENT TRASH HEAPS The global garbage glut is a relatively new problem For thousands of years everything humans produced came from the natural world around them 6 TRASHING THE PLANET
Many US cities dispose of garbage by burning it in big incinerators At this incinerator in Harrisburg Pennsylvania a mechanical claw grabs garbage and moves it to a furnace Ancient humans made knives axes and other tools out of shells animal bones wood and stones Potters shaped clay into containers to hold food and water Other ancient craftspeople wove reeds leaves and twigs into baskets They used plant fibers and the skins and wool of animals to make clothing All these materials are biodegradable when they decompose they break down into tiny harmless particles In fact the particles actually benefit the environment They contain minerals and other substances that enrich the soil and provide nutrition for plants Early peoples used their tools containers and fabrics until they broke or tore They tossed items that couldn’t be mended or reused onto trash heaps on the outskirts of their settlements Some of the trash such as baskets and clothing decomposed quickly Other trash such as bones shells stone tools and pieces of glazed pottery decomposed very slowly over thousands of years Yet none of these items polluted the air land FROM RAGS AND BONES TO PLASTIC DISASTER 7
or water Modern archaeologists study middens or ancient trash heaps The shells pottery and other long-lasting items found there help archaeologists determine how people prepared food what types of tools and weapons they used and much more about daily life in ancient times CITY LIFE The world’s first cities emerged in the ancient Middle East in about 3500 BCE Historians think that ancient city dwellers simply tossed their garbage including human waste animal waste and animal carcasses into streets or rivers Over the centuries as cities grew larger garbage became an increasingly worrisome problem Piles of waste attracted flies rats and other pests that spread diseases to humans During the Industrial Revolution which began in the late eighteenth century in Great Britain companies started to use power-driven machinery to produce goods Although craftspeople still made many items by hand more and more products came from large urban factories With industrialization which eventually spread to other parts of Europe and to North America cities got bigger and dirtier But even in industrialized cities most individuals did not produce much garbage Goods were expensive and citizens were thrifty They made much of their own food clothing tools and cleaning supplies at home Nothing was wasted Housewives used food scraps to make soup or fed them to domestic animals such as pigs and chickens Families handed down tools housewares furniture and clothing from one generation to the next When clothing items ripped or wore out women mended them by hand or used the scraps of cloth as diapers or rags If an item couldn’t be repaired or reused it could be sold for a few pennies In cities towns and rural areas peddlers called ragmen or rag-and-bone men went door-to-door in horse-drawn carts buying old clothes scrap metal scrap paper cooking grease and animal bones They sold the materials to businesses that recycled them into new products For instance papermakers shredded old cloth mixed it with water and 8 TRASHING THE PLANET
mashed it into a pulp which they then formed into sheets of paper Some craftspeople turned old cooking grease into candles and soap Other workers ground up animal bones and sold them to farmers as fertilizer Eventually industrialization changed the way consumers obtained household items especially in the United States In the mid-nineteenth century US manufacturers began to produce more and more goods for the consumer market Instead of making everything at home Americans could visit corner stores and department stores to buy clothing foods soaps and housewares Most products had very little packaging then Consumers usually bought food and cleaning products in bulk and carried their goods home in cloth bags This engraving from 1868 shows New York City rag pickers selling salvaged materials to a scrap merchant Sometimes called ragmen or rag-and-bone men recyclers made money by collecting unwanted materials from households and reselling them This was long before the era of city-run recycling programs FROM RAGS AND BONES TO PLASTIC DISASTER 9
