In Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte describes the fate of all the garbage thrown out by people (Royte, 2005). It is a fascinating trail, as she shows a territorial, economic, and ecological perspective of the garbage disposal system. She had visited the Gowanus Canal, a filthy place near her home in Brooklyn when she started questioning herself about garbage.
This made her follow up on the processes involved after garbage collection in an effort to learn how they get to eliminate garbage entirely from the environment (Royte, 2005). She started cataloguing her daily garbage, and tracked it through collection in garbage transit stations, separation in landfills, and transportation to recycling plants.
Her work is
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In addition, individuals dispose off their electronic waste wrongly, and it ends up in the incinerators, where toxic gases are produced.
Social change
The concept of social change is described by Royte after she noticed a massive overconsumption of canned products such as beer, yoghurt, and cookies whose packagings find their way in garbage disposal centres.
She suggests that Americans should reduce their overconsumption of such commodities since they are overburdening the non-biodegradable waste load in the garbage collection facilities. It is surprising to note that every Americans disposes more than four pounds of trash on a daily basis (Royte, 2005).
Alienation
Royte states that every American student throws away three and a half ounces of food on a daily basis (Royte, 2005). She feels that the students should be educated on the importance of alternative disposal methods for food products, and appreciating the available resources. Some societies lack such nutritional and financial resources, and they end up accepting contracts where they give up their lands as sewage disposal centres or treatment centres, resulting in numerous airborne complications and asthmatic
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The trash problem in Staten Island, NY
This book vividly discusses the trash problem in Staten Island, New York. Even with a well defined garbage collection, recycling, and landfill system, the management of Staten Island does loathes scrutiny, hence the reason they ignored Royte’s calls. It also shows how most New York residents are disinterested in making work easier for the garbage collection sector, eventually having a negative effect on the environment.
Conclusion: Connection to my research project
In conclusion, the material in Garbage Land connects to my research problem in that, it explains how the garbage collected from households is handled. Even though there are no aseptic techniques involved by the people handling this trash, it is clear that most of the waste obtained is recycled for re-use. Accordissng to Royte, 28% of the remainder is buried, 17% incinerated, and 1% is “surface disposed” without processing (Royte,
...ghner, 1993). It is the authors belief that consumers are aware of their consumption, as well as realize how wasteful they are with food in general For the students who do not fit into Eighner's wasteful category, he presents a grouping of frugal consumers who, "carefully wrap up even the smallest leftover[s] and shove it into the back of the refrigerator for six months or so before discarding it" (Eighner, 1993).
One social con of the RCRA program is the lack of attempt to address landfills being in low-income communities. Even though the RCRA give a critical municipal service, they have failed to combat the issue of the placement of landfills near low-income homes. The problem is continuing to grow. These issues focused upon the fact that the waste mostly comes from outside the community, which eventually causes impacts to residents and degraded the environmental conditions. This issue also causes a decrease in property value because people do not want to live near landfills.
The author, Lars Eighner explains in his informative narrative, “On Dumpster Diving” the lifestyle of living out of a dumpster. Eighner describes the necessary steps to effectively scavenge through dumpsters based on his own anecdotes as he began dumpster diving a year before he became homeless. The lessons he learned from being a dumpster diver was in being complacent to only grab what he needs and not what he wants, because in the end all those things will go to waste. Eighner shares his ideas mainly towards two direct audiences. One of them is directed to people who are dumpster divers themselves, and the other, to individuals who are unaware of how much trash we throw away and waste. However, the author does more than direct how much trash
Rogers describes the specific process the garbage man goes through when collecting trash. From emptying the bins to hydraulic compressors crushing the trash and taking said trash to a sanitary land fill, Roger gives a detailed description of this routine that is never really thought about. Most people don’t think twice about what their garbage man does so when it was described with such detail it catches the interest of the reader. This allows Rogers to now begin talking about landfills and other larger topics. The way Rogers keeps the interest of the reader is by using very visual details in her writing.
According to Sze, “Harvey uses garbage as a metaphor for the postmodern condition and as a material object (the monumental waste disposal problem) to represent changing forms of capitalism.” (Sze, 2007, p. 117) What she means by this is that some individuals linked the term ‘garbage’ as a symbolic ideology related to how our capitalist culture has grown accustomed to throwing away not only our garbage and the things we no longer need or use, but also the values, lifestyles, and personal attachments that we have made in our lives. In addition, the concept of garbage is also related to the race and class issue. That is, the author states that some neighborhoods are more inclined to have greater amounts of trash due to the individuals (or groups of individuals) that live therein. Some base the issue of garbage on race, ethnicity and socioeconomic
Benjamin, Daniel. "The Benefits of Recycling Are a Myth." Garbage and Recycling. Ed. Mitchell Young. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 2 July 2014.
According to Roni Neff, Marie Spiker, and Patricia Truant, up to 40% of all food produced in America is thrown away (Neff, Spiker, & Truant, 2015, p.2). This wasted food is worth hundreds of billions of dollars that is lost each year in the United States alone, and creates many threats to our country. Food waste is an important and widespread issue in the United States because most of the food thrown away is perfectly fine, it could be used to feed the hungry, and the waste hurts the environment.
Velazquez focuses on the unfair treatment of the poor community by large corporations. Because of this focus, she ignores the fact that in this distribution of waste-transfer stations, it can bring enormous economic values for this country’s development. Velazquez conveys that large corporations dump lots of waste and she has “personally never see a waste-transfer station on the upper East Side of Manhattan, or in the Hamptons” while almost forty percent of New York City’s waste-transfer stations are in her district (766). As a representative of her district, it is reasonable for Velazquez to be outraged by the waste-transfer stations’ distribution from her district’s residents’ points of view.
As of January 1, 2003, the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario started to ship one hundred percent of its garbage into the landfills of Michigan. In 2003, Toronto exported garbage at a rate of 7.2 tons per minute. Garbage trucks from Toronto run seven days a week twenty-four hours a day, so at the rate of 7.2 tons per minute it works out to be that Michigan imports 10,368 tons of Toronto's garbage per day. But it wasn't always like this, Governor John Engler and his administration turned garbage into a growth industry. The state lowered the liability standards for landfill owners and also provided tax-free financing for new facilities. The result of these changes lead to too many landfills and not enough garbage to fill them. So the landfill owners lowered their prices and searched even harder for garbage. Today, Michigan's private landfills charge ten to fifteen dollars per ton to dump while other landfill owners in neighboring states charge twenty five to fifty dollars per ton. Toronto did the math and realized that it is cheaper to haul its garbage 300 miles and dump it in Michigan then it is to dump it close to home. And on top of that, Michigan has eliminated funds fo...
The majority of people waste food on a daily basis. In fact, in the U.S. alone there is an estimate that over half of the food produced goes uneaten; meanwhile there are people who are in need of food, and it ultimately goes to waste (Dockterman). For example, in his essay, “On Dumpster Diving,” author Lars Eighner writes about his experiences of dumpster diving with his pet dog, during his years of homelessness. According to Eighner, much of the food and materials he came across in the dumpsters were in usable shape, and many items were new. Clearly there needs to be a change in American food waste, in current and, hopefully not so much in, future generations. In order to bring about change in this misuse of food, Americans need to be conscious
Each year about 27% of America’s food gets thrown out, with more than 300 pounds of food per person ending up in the waste stream. The disposal cost of such food exceeds one billion dollars in local tax funds annual...
Humankind produces and consumes with little regard for waste. Susan Strasser’s Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash focuses on consumption’s byproduct; trash and what humankind has done to dispose of their waste over the past decades. Strasser catalogues an often deemed unsophisticated part of our modern society as being “central to our lives yet generally silenced or ignore” (p.36), throughout her book elucidating on the premise that one’s own view and opinion of what is deemed as trash varies greatly from person to person. Strasser explicates to the reader the rise of mass markets across the world and the impacts that production and consumption have on the creation of trash. Strasser begins to follow the story of trash in the pre-colonial
Making those rag pickers apart of a positive environmental impact and ecosystem that allows the city to exist without plans for bigger landfills. Still since these people dig through garbage they are an unwanted society, and it is seen as a taboo within the mainstream culture. //328// d. Globalization of Capitalism/ page 30: capitalism (investing
“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell what kind of man you are,” a famous quote by the lawyer, gastronomist, and author, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Although proper recycling is probably the goal of many people, there are some who still overstuff a plastic garbage bag for the trash guys to pick-up. According to Edward Humes in his book, “Garbology, Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash,” newspapers make up point six percent of the nation's landfills, but paper contributes twenty-eight point two percent.” My narrative essay assignment which is designed to record what type of garbage I create and how much accumulates during a pre-determined time frame can result in a positive outcome. Hopefully, this assessment gives me insight into whether my most surely negligible amount of trash makes any difference.
The United States produces “about 8.25 billion tons of solid wastes each year” (Russell 1). People do not realize the impact they have on our planet and environment. When people throw anything in the trashcan, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet. The number landfills in the United States are decreasing, but the amount and volume of waste being thrown into the new landfills is increasing (Russell 4). Because of this escalating amount of garbage, Methane which contributes to global warming is an outcome of these landfills (Russell 7). As a result, our planet is suffering because of this epidemic. The garbage being put in the landfills could be recycled, but not enough businesses, ...