Waste and Want

Author: Susan Strasser
Published: 1999

Long Winded Post. Hang on! :-)

The subtitle of the book is 'A Social History of Trash'. It is very well researched (hundreds of footnotes) and very academic. I can't take issue with most of the facts presented (well, maybe just one). The conclusions may be argued with.

The book covers several centuries of U.S. history with a focus on the late 19th, a time of post-industrial innovation and booming population. An age of innovation and cultural change that has only sped up over the past century. The theme is that our so called throw-away culture and our wants and desires are created and manipulated by corporate advertising (I'm simplifying here but bear with me). Our mounting garbage piles are due to these influences and our current wasteful culture.

I would counter there is evidence that our growing volume of garbage is due almost entirely to our growing population (and computer printers; paper makes up over 40 percent of what is in landfills). More people, more garbage. The problem is not that we make more of it per person than our recent forebears (human beings have always made more garbage than they could recycle and reuse), but that we've done such a poor job of managing it lately. Fortunately, that trend seems to be reversing thanks in part (irony here) to corporate waste management monopolies.

One data point that Strasser highlights at the end of the book is from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This states that the amount of garbage that Americans produce has increased steadily over the past forty years or so to a current level of 4.5 pounds per person per day. What the EPA uses to determine this data is called 'materials flow methodology' and can be found described in an EPA publication which is updated every two years or so.

The problem, I am convinced, is that this methodology is flawed. This was pointed out in the book Rubbish!. The problem is the EPA is estimating what is thrown away based on "... the average lifespan of different products." (pp.17-18 of '2005 Facts and Figures' PDF document). What the Garbage Project found, based on hundreds of samples excavated from landfills in different parts of the U.S., was that products are reused (e.g. garage sales, used goods stores, charity donations, hand-me-downs, refurbished and re-sold) or salvaged (primarily scrap metal) at a far higher rate than the EPA assumes. The Garbage Project had limited but convincing data that the amount of garbage finding its way to landfills in terms of pounds per person per day has been pretty steady and maybe even declined slightly over the past 50 years. The book doesn't state a number as a fact (they're scientists, they say the 'data suggests') but reading between the lines, I come away from 'Rubbish!' with a figure of about 2 pounds per person per day.

In short, I trust the scientists with their grubby hands in the actual garbage flow rather than the bureaucrats with their fancy calculations.