April 9, 2012
On average, every American will generate 102 tons of trash in their lifetime. Pulitzer Prize-winner Humes (No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court) asks how that number came to be, and what can be done to reduce it. To answer those questions, he interviews an interesting cast of characters, including Mike Speiser, the operator of the massive trash compactor at the Puente Hills landfill in Los Angeles, home to a 130 million-ton pile of waste; archeologist Bill Rathje, "the world's first garbologist," who asserts that "people don't really know their trashâ¦But through their trash, we sure do know a lot about them;" and Andy Keller, a vocal and provocative advocate for reusable shopping bags. Humes provides a history of waste management in America, from the use of piggeries in the 19th century (where garbage was fed to pigs) to today's reliance on landfills, and he examines the cycles of consumerism and the advent of plastics as obvious causes of the current trash crisis, pointing to a San Francisco family who lives a "near-zero waste lifestyle" as an example of possible alternatives. In his epilogue, Humes offers excellent tips for being more resourceful, so that our lives might not be "monuments to waste." Humes' take on the science and culture of "garbology" is both academic and deeply personal, making this a fascinating read.