The book begins with the image of the Gastons, a couple of hoarders on the South Side of Chicago who, in 2010, had to be literally rescued from their home because of all the trash in it. Though their behavior may seem extreme, in fact, the average American at that time was generating 102 tons of garbage over the course of a lifetime. The only real difference between hoarders and normal Americans was that hoarders didn’t hide their addiction to creating large quantities of garbage.
Author Edward Hume breaks Garbology up into three separate parts, with the first part focusing on the problem of trash, the second part focusing on investigating that problem, and the third part focusing on possible solutions to the problem. First, Hume shows how trash has always been a problem for human societies, but he reveals that the issue really came to a head in major cities in the early twentieth century. Among these cities, New York City had some of the worst sanitation and urgently needed a solution. George E. Waring, a former Civil War colonel, stepped up to fill this void, hiring his own “army” of street cleaners and creating a standardized sanitation program that became a model for other urban centers around the world.
The real origin of the modern U.S. trash problem, however, seems to be tied to the rise of consumerism, which began in the middle of the twentieth century. Consumerism was championed by people like the advertising consultant J. Gordon Lippincott, who helped create the logos for iconic American brands like Campbell’s Soup and Betty Crocker. Lippincott and proponents of consumerism promoted the virtues of spending money on new things, buying with credit, and throwing out old items before they were used up.
The rise of consumerism coincided with the rise of plastic manufacturing. Though plastic was originally touted as a miracle material that might actually save the environment (since it’s a synthetic substitute for natural resources), the problem is that after plastic is used up, it doesn’t go away. Supported by a multibillion-dollar plastic bag industry with serious lobbying power, plastic continues to be a major polluting force. In 2011, plastic bags were floating above the massive Puente Hills landfill (outside Los Angeles) looking like seagulls and also going into the oceans, where they became part of the massive floating trash heap known as the Pacific Garbage Patch.
With major companies like Waste Management generally moving slowly on sustainability issues, the problem of solving the U.S.’s garbage crisis often fell to normal people. Unless they lived right by a landfill, most Americans had very little idea where all their trash went, and sometimes it was hard or even impossible to find out. This meant first step in solving this crisis was to find a way to measure it. Efforts like Bill Rathje’s archaeology-inspired garbage digs and the MIT Trash Track team (which attached GPS chips to trash to see where it went) helped people better understand the current state of trash in the U.S., which could easily get confusing.
Many of the proposed solutions for the U.S. garbage crisis came from people with entrepreneurial ambitions. Andy Keller, Bea Johnson, and Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer all founded companies that focused not just on selling products but also on educating people about the broader state of garbage in the U.S. Though their efforts sometimes attracted criticism or even lawsuits, ultimately, they each achieved some level of success and built a foundation for others to work with.
Hume ends the book by giving a list of his own five best pieces of advice for people trying to cut back on waste: 1. Refuse (to buy or accept unnecessary junk); 2. Go Used and Refurbish; 3. Stop Buying Bottled Water; 4. No More Plastic Grocery Bags; and 5. Focus on Cost of Ownership (that is, understand that “cheap” objects cost more than durable, long-lasting ones in the long term). He asks readers to send him their own suggestions for sustainability.
