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Sanitation truck.

W.A.S.T.E. Not

John Scanlan’s “The Idea of Waste” argues that all civilization is an attempt to make waste disappear.
by Madeleine Adams via The Baffler on May 15, 2025
Syringes on the beach.

Hypodermics on the Shore

The “syringe tides”—waves of used hypodermic needles, washing up on land—terrified beachgoers of the late 1980s. Their disturbing lesson was ignored.
by Jeremy A. Greene via The Atlantic on August 29, 2023
Garbage in street

When the Young Lords Put Garbage on Display to Demand Change

In 1969, a group of Puerto Rican youth in East Harlem leveraged a garbage problem to demand reform.
by Johanna Fernandez via HISTORY on September 15, 2021
Woman recycling glass, Wallingford neighborhood, Seattle, Washington, 1990

You'll Never Believe Who Invented Curbside Recycling

Far from ushering in a zero-waste world, the switch from returnables to recycling provided cover for the creation of ever more packaging trash.
by Bart Elmore, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on August 6, 2021
A pile of trash at a landfill behind a member of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The History of New York, Told Through Its Trash

In 1948, the landfill at Fresh Kills was marketed to Staten Island as a stopgap measure. No one guessed that it would remain open for more than half a century.
by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein via The New Yorker on April 24, 2021

Inside the Long War to Protect Plastic

Single-use plastic is clogging oceans and landfills. The plastic industry has waged a decades-long campaign to keep it selling it.
by Tik Root via Center for Public Integrity on May 16, 2019
Pile of garbage.

The Curious History of Crap—From Space Junk to Actual Poop

We don't think much about where our waste goes, but the history of what we do with poop is also the history of how we grow food.
by Ziya Tong via Wired on May 14, 2019

A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash

How garbage physically shaped the development of New York.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford, Robin Nagle via Collectors Weekly on June 24, 2013
Front entrance of the abandoned Florida Solite plant.

The Machine in the Garden

After decades of unchecked hazardous waste pollution, a Florida hamlet fights the developers eager to build homes there anyway.
by Jordan Blumetti via Oxford American on March 18, 2025
Trash filling the Skagit River in Washington State, 1971.

The Necessity of History for the EPA

Using evidence to remind us.
by Adam M. Sowards via Taking Bearings on March 5, 2025
A collage of rats, trash, rat exterminators, and a rat mascot.

Rats!

Baltimore's long history with its most polarizing pest.
by Lydia Woolever via Baltimore Magazine on January 2, 2025
The famous photo of the eyes from The Great Gatsby.

How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by John Marsh via Monthly Review on November 13, 2024
A ragpicker collects recyclable materials at a landfill.

Why Recycling Is Mostly Garbage

In two new books, the rise of recycling is a story of illusory promises, often entwined with disturbing political agendas.
by Daniela Blei via The New Republic on September 27, 2024
The recycling symbol.

How the Recycling Symbol Got America Addicted to Plastic

Corporations sold Americans on the chasing arrows — while stripping the logo of its worth.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on June 12, 2024
Art installation of cardboard pieces with the Amazon arrow logo, arranged in the shape of a cresting wave.

World in a Box: Cardboard Media and the Geographic Imagination

Cardboard boxes hold a world of meaning that spans from Amazon to the Container Corporation of America.
by Shannon Mattern via Places Journal on May 15, 2024
Photo of a blue bin filled with recyclable garbage.

Petrochemical Companies Have Known for 40 Years that Plastics Recycling Wouldn't Work

Despite knowing that plastic recycling wouldn't work, new documents show how petrochemical companies promoted it anyway.
by Joseph Winters via Grist on February 20, 2024
People scavenging through garbage on a barge in New York City

A History of Garbage

The history of garbage dumps is the history of America.
by Livia Gershon, Sarah Hill via JSTOR Daily on November 10, 2023
Rats in a garden.

New York’s Rats Have Already Won

I thought having a rat czar would be an easy win for the city. I was wrong.
by Xochitl Gonzalez via The Atlantic on March 2, 2023
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump tosses a paper with polling statistics during a town hall event on Oct. 6, 2016, in Sandown, N.H.

‘He Never Stopped Ripping Things Up’: Inside Trump’s Relentless Document Destruction Habits

Trump’s shredding of paper in the White House was far more widespread and indiscriminate than previously known.
by Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, Jacqueline Alemany via Washington Post on February 5, 2022
Aged photograph of Chinese laborers working on the railroad.

Artifacts Used by Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Workers Found in Utah

Researchers discovered the remains of a mid-19th century house, a centuries-old Chinese coin and other traces of the short-lived town of Terrace.
by Livia Gershon via Smithsonian on October 26, 2021
Young Lords Party march to the UN.

The Young Lords' Radical Fight for Environmental Justice

Johanna Fernández's new book on the Young Lords sheds light on the group's fight for clean streets and public health in 1960s New York City.
by Erik Wallenberg via Edge Effects on July 29, 2021
Scott Jordan in his apartment.

The Artifact Artist

New York’s 300-year-old trash becomes treasure in the hands of an urban archaeologist.
by Russ Kendall via Aeon on April 5, 2021

Human Crap: The Idea of ‘Disposability’ Is a New and Noxious Fiction

We are demigods of discards – but our copious garbage became a toxic burden only with the modern cult of ‘disposability.’
by Gabrielle Hecht via Aeon on March 25, 2020

American Beauties

How plastic bags came to rule our lives, and why we can’t quit them.
by Rebecca Altman via Topic on August 1, 2018

If You Smell Something, Say Something

City dwellers of the 19th century were dogged by a foul terror: miasma.
by Conevery Bolton Valencius via Distillations on July 31, 2018

What Time Capsules, Meant for Future Americans, Say About How We See Ourselves Today

We used to fill our time capsules with fancy stuff. Now we put in junk.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on September 8, 2017

The Trashy Beginnings of "Don’t Mess With Texas"

A true story of the defining phrase of the Lone Star state.
by Katie Nodjimbadem via Smithsonian on March 10, 2017
A pile of trash on the street in New York, 1911.
partner

The Pig Apple

The story of the thousands of free-range pigs who managed New York’s waste in the 1800s.
via BackStory on August 4, 2016
Harry Silberstein driving a Paper-Calmenson scrap metal pick-up wagon, ca. 1900. (Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest)
partner

Scrapping in the Streets

A discussion of the booming 19th-century trade in scrap metal.
via BackStory on August 4, 2016
People waiting for a bus, one with a dog.

The Urban Upwelling

By tracing commodities beyond the human, we can learn a great deal about how cities function as ecological and economic units.
by Etienne S. Benson via The American Historian on November 30, 2015
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