Trashing the Planet: Examining Our Global Garbage Glut
However the businesses that produced the new consumer goods contributed to the dirt and grime of cities Factories powered their machinery by burning coal and petroleum Smoke and soot belched from factory smokestacks polluting the air and water Human sewage added to the filth While some nineteenth-century cities built sewer systems and some wealthy people installed flush toilets and indoor plumbing in their homes many city dwellers relieved themselves in outhouses and chamber pots Waste often seeped from outhouses into the surrounding soil and waterways and citizens often emptied chamber pots by simply dumping the contents outside As cities grew bigger dirtier and more crowded trash began to pile up Some city officials realized that garbage was a threat to public health They hired workers to pick up residents trash and haul it to dumps on the edge of town Usually just open pits these places reeked and they attracted rats and other pests Meanwhile US companies picked up the pace of manufacturing In the early twentieth century using assembly-line production factories churned out mass-produced clothing housewares cosmetics canned foods and electric appliances In magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post advertisers promised Americans that they would find health and happiness with new hair-care products instant baking mixes presliced bread vacuum cleaners toasters radios toothpaste deodorants and nail polish To attract shoppers attention manufacturers placed the new products inside colorful and decorative packaging The containers and wrappers included cans cardboard boxes aluminum foil paper and cellophane an early form of plastic With mass production and more stores the new goods were affordable and easy to purchase US families no longer reused household materials the way earlier generations had They began to toss empty containers food scraps and other garbage into the waste bin rather than upcycling them More big cities began to provide curbside garbage pickup But instead of just taking trash to open dumps haulers took it to 10 TRASHING THE PLANET
By the early decades of the twentieth century access to mass-produced goods had become a reality for most American consumers They bought manufactured food products cleaning supplies toiletry items and other items from stores rather than making them at home The shift led to a significant increase in the amount of trash Americans produced every year This 1936 picture by acclaimed US photographer Berenice Abbott shows the display window of an A P grocery store in New York City large incinerators or to facilities called sanitary landfills There operators covered layers of trash with alternating layers of soil Burying the garbage helped cut down on rats and odors More and more cities built sewage systems to carry off and treat human waste Indoor toilets became commonplace in big cities But trash removal and sanitation was not uniform across the United States In many places citizens still carted their trash to open dumps on the outskirts of town In other areas residents burned their own garbage in backyard or basement incinerators releasing toxic smoke into the air Many Americans still used outhouses well into the twentieth century FROM RAGS AND BONES TO PLASTIC DISASTER 11
THE PLASTIC AGE Besides selling new consumer products manufacturers took advantage of new materials These included celluloid a plastic made from plant fiber nitric acid and camphor a substance found in the wood and bark of camphor trees Businesses used celluloid to make items such as combs and hairbrushes dolls and photographic film Invented by US chemist Leo Baekeland in 1909 Bakelite was a kind of plastic made from the chemicals carbolic acid and formaldehyde Manufacturers turned to Bakelite to produce telephones radio casings buttons and costume jewelry Starting in the late 1920s chemists began to develop stronger and more flexible plastics including polystyrene polyester polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene terephthalate Many of the new plastics were made from petrochemicals or chemicals derived from petroleum or natural gas Manufacturers launched advertising campaigns to sell the wonders of plastic to the public and the advertising worked Consumers came to believe that plastic was a miracle substance and in some ways it is Plastic is lightweight and inexpensive It can be molded into just about any shape It can be rigid and strong or soft and flexible Plastic wrapping keeps food fresh by blocking out harmful bacteria Plastic beverage bottles are much lighter and cheaper than glass bottles and do not shatter like glass Some plastic fibers are even strong enough to stop bullets In the 1950s companies used plastic to make plates and cups toys clothing office supplies household appliances and thousands of other products Americans filled their homes with materials bearing names such as Tupperware Formica and Naugahyde Manufacturers also used petrochemicals to make synthetic paints adhesives insulation cleaning supplies cosmetics fertilizers and pesticides The new products were popular with both consumers and businesses But they came with a downside Because plastic and other synthetics were inexpensive and abundant consumers didn’t hesitate to throw them away when they were no longer needed The materials quickly ended up in landfills and incinerators 12 TRASHING THE PLANET
BLACK MONDAY On July 26 1943 a black haze of noxious pollution enveloped downtown Los Angeles California The thick smoke blotted out sunlight It left thousands of city residents coughing and choking as tears flowed from their stinging eyes Pedestrians clutched handkerchiefs to their faces hoping in vain to filter out the airborne toxins The day became known as Black Monday Los Angelenos called the pollution smog a combination of fog and smoke that often settles over Southern California A ring of high mountains surrounds the Los Angeles Basin trapping smog within the city In the 1940s and 1950s this toxic pollution choked Los Angeles residents on at least two hundred days a year Most residents blamed cars and factories for creating the Black Monday smog but the problem was actually caused by household trash At the time many of LA residents burned garbage in backyard incinerators nicknamed Smokey Joes This method of garbage disposal added 500 tons 454 metric tons of sooty toxic pollution to the air every day The smog was so bad that Los Angeles residents could not dry their clothes outdoors because black soot often rained down from the skies When scientists pointed out the problems caused by Smokey Joes many city residents refused to give up garbage burning They could pay a fee to have the city haul their trash to a landfill but many did not want to pay In 1957 Los Angeles finally passed a law that banned backyard trash burning A 500 fine awaited anyone who fired up a Smokey Joe Smog hangs over downtown Los Angeles in the 1940s The bulk of the city’s air pollution in this era stemmed from burning home garbage Millions of city residents burned their trash in backyard incinerators called Smokey Joes FROM RAGS AND BONES TO PLASTIC DISASTER 13
