Garbology

In 2011, people often saw objects flying over the Puente Hills landfill that looked like birds but which were in fact plastic bags. Bags are a modern problem that previous public sanitation officials like Waring didn’t have to deal with.

Around that time, Big Mike enjoyed acting as an informal ambassador for Puente Hills, speaking with tour groups and the press. While people who live near the landfill can appreciate its efficiency, most still want it gone. There’s also a dark side to the landfill: it was used at least once to cover up a murder. While not as sensational as murder, perhaps the even darker side of the landfill is how it reflects the consequences of consumerism in the United States, where people buy things just to throw them away within a year.

Some have blamed American consumerism on the rise of television (and TV advertising). While few dispute the connection between TV and consumerism, it is ultimately just one factor. One of the prominent pioneers in corporate branding during the mid-twentieth century was J. Gordon Lippincott (whose company created the Campbell’s Soup label, the Chrysler logo, the Betty Crocker spoon, and the General Mills “G”). Lippincott noted that the United States was perhaps the first society in the world that threw things away before they were worn out.

Lippincott’s goal was to fundamentally change American culture, replacing thrift with conspicuous consumption. Though he was intelligent, many of Lippincott’s advertising schemes were based on total lies, trying to make products seem to be the opposite of what they actually were. His work coincided with the introduction of credit cards, which helped get rid of the old idea of saving up to buy things.

Not all agreed with Lippincott’s vision of the United States—some rejected the idea of a nation focused on consumption and waste. Vance Packard was one of the main critics of American wastefulness, suggesting that consumption was not a good long-term economic strategy and that conservation and durability were more important. Packard’s pessimistic books sold well, but ultimately; it was Lippincott’s vision of the U.S. that became more successful.

In addition to being linked to the golden age of TV, American consumerism was also linked to the “plasticization” of the country. Between 1960 and 2000, plastic went from being 0.4 percent of municipal waste by weight to 11 percent. In 2000, Americans consumed 100 billion plastic bags a year, costing retailers $4 billion. The rise of plastic coincided with the rise of disposable products, which often had plastic packaging.

One of the biggest symbolic changes of the 1960s was when Coca-Cola went from reusable glass bottles to “one-way” glass bottles. Soon after came the plastic two-liter soda bottle, ensuring that soda distribution would never again be as sustainable as it was in 1960, even with more ambitious recycling programs. For soda manufacturers, the switch away from reusable glass lowered costs, pushing hidden costs, like increased pollution, onto taxpayers.

While disposable new products helped grow landfills, an equally significant issue was the end of old methods for disposing of waste. Previously, piggeries used to take up a lot of waste, with pigs eating up edible portions of waste.

Though pigs were a major garbage-disposal force up through World War II, around that time, people began to believe that garbage-fed pigs were worse for human consumption, with a worse taste and the chance of infecting people. New laws decreed that garbage fed to pigs had to be heated to sanitize it, and this ended up being so expensive that piggeries as a source of garbage disposal had mostly vanished by 1970.

Two other recent changes—the compacting garbage-truck and the green plastic trash bag—had an unexpected effect on increasing waste, since they made it more difficult for scavengers to identify useful material and remove it before it went to landfills.

Finally, landfilling became more common because industrial-size incinerators declined in popularity. New clean air laws caused them to close in most places around the country, except New England, where landfill space (and land in general) was at a premium.

This growing trash crisis was what ultimately led to the expansion of the Puente Hills landfill outside of Los Angeles in the 1970s. The landfill, which was initially created as just a backup plan, accidentally grew into the largest active landfill in the country in 2011, both an engineering marvel and a cautionary tale that shows the consequences of excess through mountains of trash.