Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash Hardcover – April 19, 2012
Author: Visit ‘s Edward Humes Page ID: 1583334343
From Bookforum
Humes, in short, presents us with a compelling problem
Review
—Kirkus Reviews
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth
—Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland
–Samuel Fromartz, author of Organic, Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of the Food & Environment Reporting Network
—Bookforum
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Hardcover: 288 pagesPublisher: Avery (April 19, 2012)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 1583334343ISBN-13: 978-1583334348 Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1 x 9.3 inches Shipping Weight: 1 pounds Best Sellers Rank: #642,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #131 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Civil & Environmental > Environmental > Waste Management #331 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Nature Travel > Ecotourism #1403 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Environmental Economics
I encountered this book by chance when part of the NPR interview of Edward Humes, author of Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash caught my attention.
In the interview, Humes was talking about Bakelite, an early plastic that was used for billiard balls, piano keys, and telephones — things that were meant to be durable, and have long, even heirloom-length, lives. He was calm and reasoned, not casting blame but describing a shift in the way materials are used as being problematic. It was impersonal, informative, and assumed intelligence from the audience.
Humes opens the book with an anecdote of elderly hoarders, Jesse & Thelma Gaston, who had been trapped in their own home, by their own trash, for three weeks. He moves further into the story of trash by describing other hoarders, the condition of hoarding, and the media attention it has received in the last few years. His punchline is startling:
"But little if any thought is given to the refuse itself, or to the rather scarier question of how any person, hoarder or not, can possibly generate so much trash so quickly.
Of course, there’s a reason for this blind spot: namely, the amount of junk, trash, and waste that hoarders generate is perfectly, horrifyingly normal. It’s just that most of us hoard it in landfills instead of living rooms, so we never see the truly epic quantities of stuff that we all discard. But make no mistake: The two or three years it took the Gastons to fill their house with five to six tons of trash is typical for an American couple." (page 3/location 106)
He follows this assertion with a discussion of how much trash the average American generates daily, coming up with an average lifetime production of 102 tons of trash.
Edward Humes introduces his readers to what is called garbology or the study of trash. Mr. Humes sets himself the objective to answer three questions in his study of trash:
1. What is the nature and cost of the 7.1 pounds of trash that each American generates on average every day during his/her lifetime (102-tons of trash legacy)?
2. How is it possible to generate so much trash with often too little thought spent on this generation rate?
3. What can be done to reduce this mountain of waste that each American generates during his/her life (pp. 4; 12; 92; 140; 155)?
1. Mr. Humes shares with his audience some interesting stats about the biggest "fillers" of America’s landfills. Furniture & furnishings, clothing & footwear, and wood packaging represent the biggest contributors of total landfilled trash by weight (p. 34). Readers also learn that paper, food scraps, yard waste, and plastics each represent more than 10% of materials that Americans throw away, by weight, before recycling and composting. In addition, Mr. Humes discloses that containers & packaging, nondurable goods, durable goods, and food scraps represent together over 90% of the product categories that Americans bury in their landfills, by weight, after recycling and composting (p. 35).
Similarly, Mr. Humes does a great job in bringing to light the cost of that trash to the U.S. economy. The Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council estimates that the current system of burying waste in landfills amounts to burying a billion barrels of oil a year that could be used for much needed energy (p. 232). Waste Management, Inc., on its side, is working on new processes that could one day make it possible to derive over $200 worth of synthetic gasoline from a ton of trash.
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