Sia Sheth

Grant Leuning
MCWP 40
28th November, 2020
Paper 3: Final Draft

The term ‘Garbology’ was initially introduced in the 1960s and is essentially the study

and observation of the trash and modern refuse discarded by a community to better understand

the population and their culture. In the book Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by

Edward Humes, the author explores the astonishingly high amount of garbage wastefulness that

has become a part of the American society and how each individual can help reduce the effects

of the Anthropocene, which is linked to our excessive trash output, by efficiently managing our

garbage. The Anthropocene, which is the current geological era during which humans have had a

huge impact on the environment, is discussed in the article A safe operating space for humanity

by Johan Rockström. Specifically, the writer explains the recent acceleration of climate change

and the causes of it. This is directly related to our excessive amount of trash disposal due to

various reasons. Most importantly, humans have come up with numerous different ideas to solve

the problem of our excessive amounts of wastefulness, however, they remain largely ineffective

in solving the issue due to many reasons, such as choosing to focus on the wrong aspects of the

waste problem and coming up with good solutions that never get implemented. Instead, the

solutions we have implemented in the past have caused more damage than good to the overall

environment and thus, it is necessary for us to think long-term and consider all factors while

coming up with solutions to the “garbage crisis”.

Throughout the book Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash it is evident that even

though humans have attempted to solve the issue surrounding our trash output in the past, we

have gone about it in the wrong manner. We have chosen to focus on the issue of where to put

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the trash rather than how to reduce it, or we have chosen to ignore some important factors while

considering alternative solutions to landfills. By doing so, we have failed to recognize the root

cause of the garbage crisis: our excessive amounts of trash. This has a direct impact on the

Anthropocene since all our past solutions have a direct impact on the environment, which is

essentially what the Anthropocene states.

In recent years, humans have recognized the astonishing amount of trash we dispose of

on a daily basis and the effect of this trash on our surroundings, thus leading to humans coming

up with different solutions to this problem. One of the significant issues when trying to solve the

“garbage crisis” is that we recognise the wrong problem and go about solving it in the wrong

manner - mainly, by coming up with a short-term solution rather than a long-term one. The

problem that we should be focusing on solving is how to reduce the amount of trash Americans

throw out on a daily basis. In a year, Americans throw out almost 400 million tons of rubbish -

roughly equal to eighteen times the collective weight of the entire U.S. adult population!

(Humes, 22) Instead, in 1983, Los Angeles christened Puente Hills as the future of trash - the

solution to the “garbage crisis” and a model facility. When political leaders and the press started

discussing the garbage crisis during that time, the first question to come up was the question of

where to put the trash. To solve this crisis, Los Angeles’s leaders implicitly declared that they

would bury all the trash in a canyon on the edge of the San Gabriel Valley and “slowly turn it

into a garbage mountain.” (Humes 52-53) Not only was this solution not addressing the real

problem - which was the unreasonably high amount of trash disposed of on a daily basis - but it

was also not a long term solution to the question it was actually addressing - where to put the

trash. Moreover, this was one of the main reasons why the process of climate change was

accelerated. As mentioned in the article, land use is one of the major factors of the acceleration

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of climate change (Rockström, 3). At that time, what was needed was for Americans to

reconsider their daily level of wastage and come up with solutions to reduce this amount since

that would help tackle the root of the trash wastage issue. Landfills simply postponed this

problem, took the stench of the garbage away from the streets and brought up the same question

once again: once Puente Hills is full, where will they put the trash? Thus, even though the Los

Anegeles leaders attempted to solve the “garbage crisis”, this attempt was futile and it can be

argued that it instead worsened the crisis further since it delayed solving the actual problem - the

high level of wastage. In this example, the reason for the solution failing was because the leaders

chose to focus on the problem of where to put the trash rather than the problem of how to reduce

wastage. From this form of failure, we can learn that generally, it is best to first locate the root

issue or the source of the problem (trash) and then try to come up with long term solutions to that

specific problem.

Another one of the issues while trying to solve the garbage problem was that on one hand

humans were trying to find places to put the trash and ways to reduce the trash, while on the

other hand, we also prioritised finding and using the most convenient trash disposal methods.

Thus, this led to people coming up with convenient, but unsustainable ways to store trash which

inadvertently worsened the already high levels of trash in landfills. An example of this was the

green-plastic bag, which was billed as a convenience for humanity and resulted in a lot more

trash landing up in landfills rather than in the manufacturing chain. Before 1960, which was

when the Union Carbide bill was passed regarding the green-plastic bag, it was a common

occurrence for scavengers to look through open trash cans for recyclables or reusables. (Humes,

137) These scavengers made their living off of this daily routine of sifting through numerous

trash cans on a daily basis. Specifically, it was common for newly arrived immigrants to grab

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onto this opportunity of making money. In the early 20th century, the Italian immigrants formed

a network incorporated as the ‘Scavengers Protective Association’ and dominated the trash

business in San Francisco. (Humes, 137) Scavenging became a means of recycling trash and

managing the excessive trash issue. Unfortunately, with the introduction of the opaque

polyethylene trash bags, it was no longer possible for scavengers to easily sift through the trash

for reusable materials. On top of the bags hiding everything, they were also adding to the plastic

waste stream themselves. Overall, this bill of convenience ended up worsening the garbage crisis

by increasing the level of wastage sent to landfills daily. Thus, while we are trying to solve the

garbage crisis, we are still adamant in making our lives as convenient as possible which

counteracts any solution we come up with!

While coming up with a solution for the garbage crisis, it is important for us to consider

all factors that can possibly influence the matter. One of these factors is the financing of the

solution. This is because it is possible that the solution proposes an alternative that is more

expensive than the current choice, which can be seen in the example given by Humes. In 1965

and 1970 respectively, the Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Clean Air Act were declared. These

new federal laws were passed with the intention to encourage the upgradation of the disposal of

trash into a cleaner technology such as waste-to-energy plants. At that time, these waste-to-

energy plants were the next best garbage disposal solution that the U.S. came up with at that

time. Under the new regulations, the old incinerators did not pass muster due to their high levels

of pollution. Compared to the previous solutions which came up with short term solutions and

focused on finding places to dump the trash rather than reduce the trash, this solution was better

in both aspects. Furthermore, it was also a good solution in helping reduce the negative impact of

our actions on the environment. By burning trash, we are increasing carbon dioxide levels

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leading to increasing temperature which threatens and challenges all living creatures, including

humanity (Rockstörm, 2). Thus, incinerators led to numerous negative consequences involving

human health which meant they were never the best solution. However, the issue with this

solution was that the environmentally friendly alternatives (waste-to-energy plants which

converted trash to fuel rather than fill) that the Government hoped would be used more

throughout the U.S. were often prohibitively expensive. This meant that the only region within

the U.S. to switch to waste-to-energy plants was the New England states, which happened to be

the region with the least amount of land available for landfills, leaving them with no choice. The

rest of the country decided to turn to burial and thus, the landfills started to fill up at an even

faster rate (Humes, 135). Ultimately, this meant that in the long-run the solution was not only

ineffective, but it also caused more harm than good. Whilst the old incinerators were not

environmentally friendly, at least they were a better alternative to landfills since they got rid of

the trash permanently rather than store it away from our view. The issue with this solution was

that the Government did not consider all potential factors influencing the decision of the regions

regarding their trash disposal methods. From this failure, we can understand that solving the

garbage crisis does not only pertain to finding a solution that focuses on the root cause of the

crisis, there are multiple other factors that we need to consider.

It is necessary for the government to go through with a solution or at least test it after

spending their time and effort to come up with the idea. The small trash heap in the Valley of

Dumps was supposed to be upgraded into a modern waste and energy facility in 1983 by the Los

Angeles Sanitation District. (Humes, 158) The goal was that this facility would convert the daily

flow of garbage into electricity “with a sorting and recycling center and a landfill to contain what

was left over.” Compared to the past solution, which created landfills compared to mountains,

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this solution would reduce the mountain into a small hill! This was meant to be a new type of

garbage solution combining high-tech power plants and a landfill to manage trash materials

rather than simply bury the trash. However, this vision was never actually executed by the

government. The solution, if executed, would have been the most effective and helpful solution

to solve the garbage crisis. It would have shifted the solution ideas away from trash burials and

towards managing the “trash materials” which would benefit reducing the effects of the garbage

crisis as well as the Anthropocene. (Humes, 159) The issue with this solution was the political

matters surrounding it during those years as well as it being too ambitious. Furthermore, the

citizens protested the idea of high-tech power plants near their homes since they believed it

would cause high levels of pollution and preferred not to have their trash so close to home. If this

solution was implemented in some remote location, it might have worked out, however, after

years of telling the citizens that these plants emit high levels of pollution, they refused to allow

them to be built near their homes. From needing a 10 year permit to the protests about the

location of the plant being too close to home, numerous other issues arose came in between the

planning of the solution and the execution of it. Thus, after years of planning this and promising

a better management of trash to the civilians, the end result was to continue burying trash at

Puente Hills. This wasted the time, efforts and money of the government and didn’t solve

anything, thus, doing more harm than good.

Whilst a lot of the solutions we have come up with in the past have failed for various

different reasons, it can also be argued that there are a few solutions that have succeeded as well.

One such solution that has had the largest impact on trying to solve the garbage problem is

recycling. Past the 1980s, which was when the waste-to-energy plants solution died down, the

idea of recycling was beginning to be embraced by most countries in the U.S. This idea grew to

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encourage trash art through a “splashy, high-profile resident-artist program”. The two main

scavenger companies created in San Francisco in the 1920s merged into one corporation called

Norcal Waste Systems, which was renamed as Recology in 2009. This solution to focus on

recycling was by far the most effective one. Recology grew to become the biggest organic

recycling company which recycled “yard waste and garbage from San Francisco’s five thousand

restaurants (220,000 soggy tons a year) into 150,000 cubic yards of compost that’s widely used

by the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma Valleys” (Humes 326). This solution was comparatively a

lot better since it created a closed loop by bringing the natural process of decay back to the

human world - which could never be achieved through the use of landfills. However, while this

solution was effective in reducing the use of landfills, it hardly put a dent in the overall problem -

the American garbage mountain. Even if we maximise recycling as much as possible, it is still a

fact that we are disposing of excessively high levels of trash on a daily basis Since the root cause

of the American garbage problem lies with the amount of trash we are disposing off of on a daily

basis, a real solution to this problem would be if each and every individual recognizes the

garbage crisis as an important one and does their part in helping to reduce the amount of waste

that they dispose of on a daily basis. Even though this sounds like too easy a solution, it can be

surprising how effective the simple act of acknowledging our excessive amount of waste and

attempting to reduce this number can be. Furthermore, for the future, it would also be beneficial

if the government could subsidize environmentally friendly alternatives to landfills, such as

waste-to-energy plants, and come up with long-term rather than short-term solutions.

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 Works Cited

Rockström, Johan, et al. "A safe operating space for humanity." nature 461.7263 (2009):

472-475.

Humes, Edward. Garbology: Our dirty love affair with trash. Penguin, 2013.