Garbology Themes

Throughout his book Garbology, Edward Humes repeats the statistic that, over the course of a lifetime, the average American generates 102 tons of trash. Though extreme hoarders on reality TV may seem like exceptional people with an addiction to trash, in fact, the only thing that makes them unique is that they don’t hide how much trash they generate. For most Americans, the real cost of trash is hidden after it gets picked up…

According to Edward Humes in Garbology, the modern U.S. trash problem has its genesis in new ideas about consumerism that took root in the country around the middle of the 20th century. Perhaps the biggest proponent of this consumerist movement was J. Gordon Lippincott, an advertising consultant who made it his life’s goal to replace the traditional American value of thrift with the new value of consumerism. The concept of throwing things out…

As Edward Humes shows in Garbology, the history of garbage in the United States is often directly connected to the history of politics in the United States. With the industrialization of the U.S. in the late 19th century, garbage and pollution suddenly became a major problem for many people across the country, particularly in urban centers like New York City. Solving these problems often fell to elected or appointed government officials, perhaps most notably…