- It would be a
blessing if it were possible to study garbage in the abstract, to
study garbage without having to handle it physically. But that is
not possible. Garbage is not mathematics. To understand garbage you
have to touch it, to feel it , to sort it, to smell it. You have to
pick through hundreds of tons of it.
and Cullen Murphy,
Rubbish!
If you live in Tucson,
Ariz., your garbage might already be part of a Ph.D. thesis. Since
the 1970s, the members of the University of Arizona’s Garbage
Project have sorted through trash cans, picked through roadside
dumps, and even taken core samples of landfills. The resulting
millions of data points – otherwise known as dirty diapers,
disintegrating newspapers and slimy potato peels – have added up to
a paradoxical portrait of consumer habits. In Rubbish!:
The Archaeology of Garbage, first published in 1992 and
recently republished by the University of Arizona Press, project
founder William Rathje and Cullen Murphy of The Atlantic
Monthly report a few of the fascinating
findings.
With good humor and a few near-audible
sighs, they tell us that food shortages usually lead to more food
waste, toxic-waste pickup days often send more hazardous waste to
the local landfill, and paper takes up far more waste space than
the much-maligned Styrofoam cup. These disturbing tidbits are
followed with some practical, curmudgeonly advice about recycling
programs. Unfortunately, this new edition doesn’t include much
information on the last ten years of the project’s work, but
Rubbish! is still well worth digging
through.
Rubbish!: The Archaeology of
Garbage, by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, University
of Arizona Press, 2001. Paperback: $16.95. 263
pages.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Trash talk.
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