THE GARBAGE PROJECT & “THE ARCHAEOLOGY

OF US”
by [Link]

Note on reproduction: this article originally appeared as Rathje, WL. The archaeology of us. In
Ciegelski, C.(ed.), Encyclopaedia Britannica's Yearbook of Science and the Future--1997 (New
York, Encyclopaedia Britannica), 158-177, 1996. It is reproduced here with his kind permission.

(All references used in the paper are listed at the bottom of the page)

“BURIED ALIVE: The Garbage Glut” was the cover headline of Newsweek, November 27,
1989. “Are We Throwing Away Our Future with Our Trash?” had been the title of the
“American Agenda” segment of ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings on December 2, 1988.
In the late 80’s the amount of garbage America generated had reached crisis proportions for the
media and its public. The vast majority of refuse was sent to landfills, and those landfills were
filling up and closing down. Where was the garbage to go?

Concerned citizens, convinced that action had to be taken without delay, quickly identified
garbage culprits among the discards that visibly shocked them everyday--litter. Editorials in
prestigious newspapers, such as The New York Times, echoed popular perceptions that fast-food
packaging, disposable diapers, and plastic grocery bags were singularly responsible for
“straining” our landfills. Public officials in communities nationwide proposed banning the
accused perpetrators. In the meantime, into what kinds of holders were responsible folks to put
their burgers, hot coffee, groceries, and infants? Oddly enough, the answer was not clear because
in all the commotion there had been few facts presented about what was in garbage and landfills.
It was at this point that a new kind of archaeologist, a garbologist who studies fresh garbage, was
able to unearth a few relevant facts that began to fill the information vacuum that surrounded our
discards.

At this time, workers around the country were regularly digging into landfills to install methane
vents, but no one paid much attention to the refuse that was exhumed in the process. After all, it
was just smelly, disgusting garbage. The smell and look of discards were not deterrents to
archaeologists, who always expect to get their hands dirty. To archaeologists, in fact,
contemporary garbage was a gold mine of information. No society on earth had ever discarded
such rich refuse, much of it packaging which identified the contents it once held by brand, type,
cost, quantity, ingredients, nutrient content, and more. Yielding to this temptation, between 1987
and 1995, archaeologists from the Garbage Project at the University of Arizona systematically
excavated, hand-sorted, measured, and recorded thirty tons of contents from fifteen landfills
located across North America -- from California to Toronto and from the deserts of Arizona to
the everglades of Florida. The information that resulted from these digs was unexpected.

In contrast to all of the concern directed at fast food packaging and disposable diapers, the
archaeological data demonstrated that both items together accounted for less than 2 percent of
landfill volume within refuse deposited over the last ten years. Even more surprisingly, because
of industry-wide “light-weighting” -- that is, making the same form of item but with less resin --
plastic grocery bags had become thinner and more crushable to the point that 100 plastic bags
consumed less space inside a landfill than 20 paper bags. If all three items at the center of public
concern had been banned and were not replaced by anything, the garbage archaeologists were
certain that landfill managers would not have noticed the difference.

At the opposite end of the contents’ spectrum were materials that occupied large portions of
landfill space but received little public attention. Construction/demolition debris (C/D) was one.
Because of definitional issues, C/D was not even included in the EPA’s national estimates of the
refuse that goes to MSW (municipal solid waste, or standard community refuse) landfills. Like
the EPA, the Garbage Project tried to avoid the issue of C/D in MSW landfills. In fact, the
Garbage Project’s one sampling bias was an attempt to avoid areas where C/D was concentrated
because it could easily disable expensive drilling equipment. Nevertheless, C/D accounted for 20
percent or more of excavated MSW by volume and was the second largest category of landfilled
materials recovered by the Garbage Project. The largest category occupying landfill space was
paper. This was true for refuse buried in the 1980s as well as for refuse dating as far back as the
1950s because in most landfills paper seemed to biodegrade very slowly. As a result, by volume
nearly half of all of the refuse excavated by the Garbage Project has been newspapers,
magazines, packaging paper and non-packaging paper, such as computer printouts and
phonebooks.

Not long after the Garbage Project’s first reports of its landfill digs, the energy directed at
passing bans was largely redirected toward “curbside recycling.” A number of communities
began placing emphasis on reuse and recycling programs for C/D. Paper recycling promotions
often stressed the need to keep paper out of landfills because it didn’t biodegrade as quickly as
once hoped. An association of States Attorneys General determined from dig data that several
products which claimed to be “biodegradable,” including some brands of disposable diapers and
plastic garbage bags, did not biodegrade in landfills, and the false advertising of these products
was eradicated. All of this was evidence that some crucial views of garbage held by policy
planners, the media, and the public had changed -- and that garbology had been validated as a
new kind of archaeology.

A RATIONALE FOR THE GARBAGE PROJECT.

For as long as there have been archaeologists, there have been guesses about what these
behavioral scientists would discover if they were to analyze their own society’s refuse. While
often humorous, such speculations are, in fact, based on a serious rationale: If archaeologists can
learn important information about extinct societies from patterns in ancient garbage, then
archaeologists should be able to learn important information about contemporary societies from
patterns in fresh garbage. The pieces of pottery, broken stone tools, and cut animal bones which
traditional archaeologists dig out of old refuse middens provide a surprisingly detailed view of
past lifeways, just as all the precisely labeled packages and the food debris and the discarded
clothing and batteries in modern middens reveal the intimate details of our lives today. If indeed
there are useful things to learn from our garbage -- things which can enrich human lives and
minimize the undesirable environmental consequences of the industrialized world -- why wait
until we are all dead and buried to find them out? Garbology now! At least that is what Dr. Bill
Rathje and a group of students thought when they founded the Garbage Project at the U of AZ in
the Spring of 1973. Today, Rathje and the Project, including co-director Wilson Hughes who
was one of the founding students, are still thinking along these same lines.

What has set the Garbage Project apart from other behavioral science researchers is that all of its
studies have been grounded in the hands-on sorting of quantifiable bits and pieces of garbage in
place of collecting data through interview-surveys, government documents, or industry records.
In other words, the Garbage Project is studying consumer behaviors directly from the material
realities they leave behind rather than from self-conscious self-reports. The excruciating level of
detail Garbage Project student sorters use to record data (including specific brands, types, and
costs of products; weight and volume by material composition of detailed package and
commodity type categories; and much more) has also set Project studies apart from those
conducted by engineering consultant firms and even by solid waste managers.

Over the last 23 years the Garbage Project has literally immersed itself in fresh refuse placed out
for collection and in materials exhumed from landfills. Fresh discards are recorded in order to
study food waste, what people eat and drink, recycling behaviors, household hazardous wastes,
packaging discards, and even the relation between fluoride and tooth decay. In 1987, when the
Garbage Project added the excavation of landfills to its research repertoire, investigations
focused on the composition of landfilled wastes, the rate of breakdown of these materials within
landfills, the contribution of residential hazardous wastes to the leachate (or fluids) which leak
out of MSW landfills, and the impact of various waste reduction strategies -- recycling,
composting, “source reduction” (which just means “using less stuff” in the first place) -- on what
wastes are landfilled.

FRESH SORT RATIONALE AND METHODS.

The Garbage Project’s first data collection format, the “Regular Sort” was designed to sample
and record household pickups of fresh refuse (a pickup is all of the materials placed out by a
single household on one regular refuse collection day). From the beginning, the anonymity of
household samples was rigorously protected.

Solid waste managers have been characterizing wastes separated by material composition (paper,
plastic, glass, etc.) and recorded by weight since the 1880s. To these traditional measures, the
Garbage Project added a series of innovations, including records from package labels (brand,
cost, solid weight or fluid volume of original contents, specific type of contents, packaging
materials) and more detailed breakdowns of refuse categories, such as “food waste” (separated
into “once-edible food” versus “food preparation debris” and both identified by specific food
item). Because of their exacting level of detail, the Regular Sort data files which document
residential refuse are ideal for analyzing the role of specific household behaviors in generating
wastes. Today, the Garbage Project’s fresh refuse records, compiled from the long-term ongoing
study in Tucson, AZ, and short-term studies in five other cities, form a one-of-a-kind database
which currently encompasses 23 years of time depth.

FRESH SORT RESULTS.

Garbage Project studies of fresh refuse have consistently documented a few basic patterns in the
way we interact with the material world around us:

First, what people say they do and what they actually do are often different. For example, while
respondents rarely report to interviewers that they waste any food at home, two decades of
Garbage Project studies have documented that households generally waste about 15 percent of
the solid food that they buy. Such mis-reports characterize a broad range of household behaviors.
In other words, people who are interviewed or fill out surveys do not accurately report how much
food they waste, what they eat and drink, what they recycle, or the household hazardous wastes
they throw away.

This discovery, of course, is not a great surprise. It is common knowledge among behavioral
scientists that any methodology which depends upon the accuracy of answers that people give to
interviewers or on surveys suffers from problems of informant bias: [1] respondents may not be
able to accurately and quantitatively recall specific behaviors, such as how many ounces of green
beans they ate the day before or how often they discard a half-full container of pesticide; and [2]
even if respondents can accurately recall behaviors, such as beer drinking or changing the oil in
their cars, they may not want to admit to the specifics.

At this point it is important to note that systematic sorts of garbage avoid informant biases.
Refuse data are quantitative: packaging and commodity wastes can be weighed, measured for
volume, and chemically analyzed, and their labels can be read for further information, all without
relying upon the memory or honesty of respondents. When refuse is identified by specific
household (vs. only recording the generating household’s census tract), the Garbage Project
obtains permission for its sorts from the discarders. Even under these conditions of self-
awareness, Project analyses show that, except for fewer alcohol containers, discards adhere to the
same patterns found in garbage collected anonymously at the census tract level.

While independent of informant-based distortions, refuse analysis is susceptible to other forms of

bias. The most obvious one is garbage disposals, and the Garbage Project has conducted studies
to develop correction factors for ground up food. Another is people who carry recyclables to
drop-off buy-back centers. With the possible exception of aluminum cans (which some people
still recycle on their own), this problem has been greatly reduced by the curbside collection of
recyclables. At this time, in addition to each sample household’s refuse, the Garbage Project also
collects and sorts the household’s recyclables (and then turns them in for recycling). A more
serious limitation to refuse analysis is that patterns of behavior are only identifiable at the
household level; identifying the behavior of individuals within households is highly problematic.

Overall, the advantages of garbage sorting as both an alternative and quantitative measure of
behavior outweigh its limitations, and the first pattern identified -- that self-reports differ from
refuse records -- has opened up a broad new research arena.

Second, if the first pattern is no surprise, the second pattern identified is a pleasant one: the
differences between what people report they do and what they actually do often follow
systematic regularities. This conclusion was drawn from a number of Garbage Project studies
which were designed to verify consumer responses to various kinds of diet questionnaires by
comparing self-reports about food use against packaging and food debris in fresh refuse. One
specific self-report/refuse regularity the Garbage Project has documented is the “good provider
syndrome”: a female adult reporting for a household as a whole has a tendency to over-report
everything the household uses by 10 to 30 percent or more. Another regularity is the “surrogate
syndrome”: to find out how much alcohol is consumed by household members, do not ask a
drinker; drinkers consistently under-report their alcohol consumption by from 40 to 60 percent.
Instead, ask a non-drinker; non-drinkers report accurately what drinkers drink.

Unlike the other two, the third documented pattern was full of surprises: the differences between
respondent reports and the material remains in refuse frequently indicate directly opposed
behaviors; to be more specific, respondents normally report rational behaviors while their actual
behaviors often appear irrational. One of the best examples of this kind of counter-intuitive
relationship between self-reports and refuse occurred during the highly publicized “beef
shortage” in the Spring of 1973. At this time, when consumers were complaining bitterly about
high prices and erratic availability, the Garbage Project was recording the highest rate of edible
beef waste it has ever documented.

Several other instances of this kind of counter-intuitive report/refuse pattern have been
documented. In 1977, the Garbage Project gave meat fat its own separate category. Using the
long-term Tucson database, the Garbage Project determined that in 1987 people began cutting
off and discarding much larger than normal quantities of the separable fat on fresh cuts of red
meat; at the same time they also bought less fresh red meat. Both actions seemed to be responses
to a 1986 National Academy of Science study that was widely reported in the media and
identified fat from red meat as a cancer risk factor. There was just one problem. The consumers
under study replaced the fresh red meat in their diet with processed red meat which contained
large quantities of hidden fat -- salami, bologna, sausage, hotdogs, etc. -- so that the level of fat
intake in the diet did not fall; instead, it stayed the same or rose. Similar diet changes were also
identified by garbage sorts in a retirement community (Green Valley AZ) and in Marin County,
CA.

A third case involved household hazardous wastes. In 1986 Marin County sponsored a “Toxics
Away! Day” to collect household hazardous wastes, such as used motor oil and unused
pesticides. The Garbage Project recorded residential refuse two months after the collection day
and compared it to household discards sorted before the collection day. The results were
completely unexpected: there were nearly two times more potentially hazardous wastes recorded
in the refuse after the collection day than there had been before. The data clearly demonstrated
that all of the increase in hazardous wastes was due to the discard of large quantities of items
from only a few households (such as 3 or 4 half-full cans of paint or several full containers of
pesticide in one just pickup). The Garbage Project’s interpretation was that the media
surrounding the collection day made people aware of potentially hazardous commodities in their
homes. For those who missed the collection day, however, no other appropriate avenue of
discard had been identified. As a result, some residents disposed of their hazardous wastes in the
only avenue available to them -- their normal refuse pickup. The same pattern was verified in
subsequent studies in Phoenix and Tucson. The lesson learned: communities which initiate
hazardous waste collection days should inform residents of future collection times or of other
avenues for appropriate discard.
These kinds of counter-intuitive interview/refuse patterns indicate that consumers may not be
aware of how much their reported behavior differs from their actual behavior, and that the
Garbage Project is beginning to document a previously unmeasurable phenomena in the deep-
structure between what people think is happening and what is really going on. Such studies have
already led to some general principles of the differences between people’s awareness of their
behavior and their actual behavior.

General Principles and Theory: Principle 1 of Food Waste and Waste in General. One principle
originated with an explanation for the high rate of beef waste recorded during the nation-wide
“beef shortage.” The Garbage Project’s interpretation was that consumers responded to the hype
surrounding the shortage by purchasing meat when they found it in unfamiliar cuts (usually
cheaper) and quantities (usually larger). Improper preparation and improper storage of these
abnormal cuts and quantities resulted in waste. One year later, a “sugar shortage” produced a
strikingly similar pattern in residential refuse -- the waste of sugar and sweets doubled while
both were expensive and in short supply. Recording these patterns led to the proposal of
principle 1 of food waste: the less food use behavior varies over time, the less food is wasted.
The principle explained why common sliced bread, which is usually consumed at one or more
meals a day, is wasted at a rate of less than ten percent of purchase, while less-frequently
consumed specialty breads, such as hotdog rolls, biscuits and muffins, are wasted at a rate of
more than thirty-five percent. It also explains why Hispanics waste less food than Anglos: while
prepared Hispanic foods are diverse, their basic ingredients are relatively few compared to the
larger variety of foods in common Anglo diets. These and other patterns that can be deduced
from principle 1 of food waste have implications for shopping and meal planning as well as for
the design of pre-prepared foods and food packaging.

A form of corroboration for principle 1 of food waste came from an unexpected source. In 1986,
the Garbage Project conducted the EPA’s first study of household hazardous wastes in New
Orleans and Marin County. One clear pattern in both communities was that potentially hazardous
household commodities involved in regular maintenance tasks were wasted at much lower rates
than those, such as paints and stains, which are used sporadically and were often wasted in bulk.
This last discovery, confirmed in every subsequent Garbage Project household hazardous waste
study, led to the realization that principle 1 of food waste also covered hazardous discards and
was more properly principle 1of waste.

The Rationality Principles of Food Use Self-Reports and of Self-Reports in General. The
Garbage Project has conducted half a dozen self-report/refuse comparison studies which were
designed to cross-verify different interview-survey methods to record diet. Patterning in the
results has led to the rationality principle of food use self-reports, which explains the general
relationship between self-reports and refuse in a logical manner: if a food is perceived as good
for a person, it will be generally over-reported; if a food is perceived as “bad,” it will be
generally under-reported. This principle is valuable to diet researchers because it provides a
unique insight into how consumers feel toward specific foods (for example, older persons who
lived through World War II under-report all major sources of fat except one -- butter, which was
considered a highly nutritious and valuable commodity when it was rationed during WWII); in
addition, the Garbage Project’s quantitative data gives diet researchers a sense of the directions
and magnitudes of distortions in consumer responses to food questions.
The Rationality Principle of Food Use Self-Reports matches so well with patterning in counter-
intuitive behaviors that it may both be a form of a general Rationality Principle of Self-Reports:
consumers generally envision and self-report their personal behaviors in ways which seem
rational from the standpoint of their personal world view in place of self-reporting their actual
behaviors which are often somewhat irrational. This principle implies that most people will self-
report that they recycle far more than they actually do, just as they report what they perceive to
be a generally balanced diet and do not bother to mention recent splurges on high-fat meats or
over-blown desserts. If substantiated, the implications of this principle for understanding the
relationship between attitudes and behavior and for changing both in directions that will increase
conservation, improve health, and decrease environmental degradation are enormous.

Some refuse studies produce surprises even without interview comparisons. A 1993 study looked
at the causes of tooth decay using dietary information from refuse data. The results demonstrated
that although Hispanic children had consistently higher tooth decay rates than non-Hispanics,
Hispanics did not eat more foods that promote tooth decay or discard any fewer worn
toothbrushes or dental floss or consume less fluoride than non-Hispanics. Overall, this suggests
that increased tooth decay in Hispanic populations may be based more on biology than behavior.

A General Link between Population Size, Level of Technological Development, Quantities of

Garbage Generated. Given our garbage disposal woes, the key question is: how fixed or elastic is
the link between human behavior and garbage generation? This is essentially an archaeological
question. For 100 years, archaeologists have been studying refuse in an attempt to count people
with it, and the Garbage Project has done the same thing.

The U.S. Census Bureau has long been aware of the criticism that its interview-survey methods
lead to significant undercounts of ethnic minorities, especially young adult males who may be
undercounted by 40 percent. In 1987 the Quality Assurance Branch of the Census Bureau funded
a study to determine whether the Garbage Project could count people based on the types and
quantities of residential refuse they generate. The answer was: yes. For any unit of time, the
overall weight of total refuse discarded (minus yard wastes which vary markedly between
suburbs and inner cities) and the total weight of all plastics discarded vary directly with the
number of resident discarders. In fact, after the application of appropriate per person conversion
rates in well-documented test areas, the weights of both total refuse and total plastics are each
within five percent of the actual number of residents. The Garbage Project now stands ready to
cross-verify census counts with a method which does not violate subjects’ anonymity.

When Garbage Project results are placed in line with those of other archaeologists, they indicate
that increases in technological development lead to increases in garbage generation rates per
person. This suggestion has brought the Garbage Project back to the question stated above: Is
contemporary population size and level of economic development so directly linked to the
generation of large quantities of garbage that the relationship is unlikely to change anytime soon?
The specifics of a further study based upon this question will be discussed after the Landfill Sort
data format has been described below.

LANDFILL SORT RATIONALE & METHODS.

Garbage Project analyses of landfilled refuse developed out of a traditional archaeological
research question: direct interpretations of waste generation behaviors are possible with Fresh
Sort data because the refuse can be assigned a precise provenience (a household pickup within a
specific census tract) and date of discard. But what kind of interpretations of waste generation
behavior would be possible if the refuse had already been transported to a landfill, mixed with
other refuse, and buried? And how does the refuse within a landfill change because of what
archaeologists call “natural formation processes” -- high moisture content, long-term pressures
from the weight of overlying refuse, degradation (metal rusting due to chemical interactions),
biodegradation (organic materials disintegrating due to the attack of micro-organisms), and
more? With these questions in mind, the Garbage Project set out in April 1987 (by chance, just
about the same time the Mobro 4000 “garbage barge” set sail) to sample, sort, and record refuse
excavated from landfills.

To begin a dig, the Garbage Project staff stratifies a selected landfill site by the date and type of
refuse depositions; refuse is then systematically collected within sampling strata. Refuse samples
are taken at approximately 3-meter intervals within 1-meter-diameter cores drilled by bucket
augers (well depths up to 32 m.) and trenches cut by backhoes (maximum depth 7 m.). All
recovered materials are screened and hand sorted into one of forty categories based on material
composition and function (phonebooks, newspapers, PET plastic soda bottles, tinned-steel cans,
and more). Each category is measured for weight and volume. Additional studies record the
moisture content of artifacts and the concentrations of heavy metals and complex organic
compounds. The Garbage Project has now conducted comprehensive digs at 2 landfills in
Arizona, 2 in California, 2 in Illinois, 3 in Florida, 1 in New York (New York City’s Fresh Kills
Landfill on Staten Island), 1 in New Jersey, and 4 in Metro Toronto.

LANDFILL SORT RESULTS: CONTENTS.

Before Garbage Project digs, virtually all studies of fresh garbage measured solid waste
components by weight. But weight was irrelevant to the key garbage problem of the 1980s and
1990s -- that landfills are increasingly becoming “landfulls.” To determine what items are
contributing the most to the filling of landfills, from its first dig the Garbage Project measured
the volume occupied by all excavated items. In addition to these dig data, the Garbage Project
designed a compaction machine to simulate the way materials are crushed by refuse collection
equipment and long-term burial. The EPA has now decided to add volume calculations, based
largely on Garbage Project data, to its regular reports on the generation of MSW within the U.S.
Garbage Project crush calculations also comprise a critical component of LCA (Life Cycle
Analysis), which is commonly used by environmental engineering consulting firms, private
companies, and others to evaluate the environmental impacts of current or proposed products and
their packaging.

Garbage Project landfill excavations have also been used to quantify the impact of recycling
programs on the volume of wastes reaching landfills. As some recycling revenues decreased and
the costs of curbside collection rose in the late 1980s, many local governments were interested in
determining the extent of the costs “deferred” by recycling activities, such as the expense of
siting and constructing new landfills. In 1991 a consortium of governments and businesses in
Metro Toronto funded the Garbage Project to excavate three landfills and one 1950s “dump.”
The resulting Project report estimated that the “Blue Box” curbside recycling program has
conserved some 20 percent of landfill space in the Toronto area since it began in 1982.

BIODEGRADATION IN LANDFILLS.

Another set of findings from the Garbage Project’s digs underscores, especially for the public,
the need to recycle and compost materials to keep them out of refuse. Many people have
assumed that organic materials, such as newspapers, simply biodegrade in landfills. The recovery
of 2,425 datable, readable newspapers from landfill excavations dramatically changed that view,
especially since the relative proportion of newspapers varied little between materials deposited
anywhere from five to forty years before exhumation and in environments which received
anywhere between 11 and 80 inches of rain a year. The one exception was Fresh Kills Landfill
that was started in 1948 when refuse was deposited in a tidal swamp on Staten Island with no
liner. Under these conditions, refuse layers from the late 1940s and from the 1950s are now
largely devoid of organic materials, including newspapers.

Garbage Project data indicates that a substantial quantity of “raw” organics -- food and yard
wastes -- biodegrade within the first fifteen years and are the source of most landfill methane.
Finding that in every study landfill (other than at the bottom of Fresh Kills) forty percent or more
of the space is comprised of fifteen to forty year-old newspapers and other paper items, some
grass clippings and even a few heads of lettuce and carrots was somewhat of a surprise for
archaeologists and microbiologists. Once again, what people thought was happening to our
refuse and its real fate were two different things. And no wonder. Archaeologists work mainly in
open sites where degradation and biodegradation are usually rapid; most microbiologists conduct
their research as experiments in laboratories. Both open sites and laboratory settings are quite
different from the land disposal sites that have been filled with refuse over the last twenty to
forty years. In order to increase understanding of the field dynamics of biodegradation and
methane generation, with its fifth dig, the Garbage Project initiated cooperative research
relationships with microbiologists and environmental engineers at the University of Oklahoma,
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Proctor and Gamble’s Environmental Research
Laboratory in Cincinnati. While it is clear that biodegradation cannot be taken for granted in
landfills, a process has begun to systematically and scientifically define the parameters of how
the contents of landfills change through time.

HAZARDOUS WASTES AND LEACHATE.

The same sort of process of defining parameters within micro-environments inside landfills is
underway for the study of heavy metals. The basic data are heavy metal concentrations derived
from assays of finely screened materials collected from all Project landfill samples. Such
information from inside landfills is rare and is being cited, usually in combination with the
Garbage Project’s reports on hazardous wastes recorded in fresh residential refuse, in a series of
Superfund litigations in cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, and
Boston.

The Garbage Project has its own plans for integrating fresh and landfill data on hazardous wastes
in MSW. The heavy metal assays of fines are being compared with detailed item by item lists
(such as 2 light bulbs, 1 drain opener can, two newspapers, etc.) of the refuse identified within
each 150 lb. landfill sample. The goal is to determine the rate of movement of heavy metals and
other hazardous wastes into the landfill matrix. One preliminary study of sources of lead has
already produced a potentially important preliminary finding. While lead levels were consistent
in most matrix samples which were deposited before 1985, the discarded dry-cell batteries, light-
bulbs, and lead solder-seam cans which were suspected of contributing the lead were highly
sporadic in their occurrence. Only newspapers appeared consistently in refuse samples. A link
between lead levels in fines and lead in old newspaper newsprint that was proposed by the
Garbage Project was supported by additional analysis results. In 1985 lead was reduced
significantly as a constituent of newspaper inks due to rising public concerns over heavy metals.
It seems more than coincidental that the lead levels in landfill fines samples dropped
dramatically at the same time. This example illustrates both the potential of Garbage Project
studies to isolate sources of hazardous waste in landfills and of source reduction responses to
reduce hazardous wastes in new commodities.

INTEGRATION OF REGULAR SORT AND LANDFILL SORT DATABASES.

A number of recent consumer surveys have determined that for the vast majority of the public
“source reduction” is a poorly defined or undefined term. If this is the case, then “source
reduction” seems doomed to failure, and recycling materials after they have been created is the
only viable means of minimizing the quantity of wastes in need of disposal. Recycling is clearly
the first step in efficient solid waste management, but recycling alone has limits and does nothing
in the face of demands by many populations world-wide for increasing consumption. Given this
situation, many concerned groups, including the NRC (National Recycling Coalition), are
emphasizing source reduction as a concept whose time has come. In this environment, it is
important to evaluate source reduction’s potential to significantly minimize waste generation in a
way which will interest the public in, and educate the public to, contributing personally to that
potential.

With this goal in mind, the Garbage Project is currently involved in a comprehensive study
which integrates its Fresh Sort database with its Landfill Sort database. Already the study has
indicated source reduction’s potential in the form of results which are likely to attract the
public’s attention, largely because they contradict current beliefs that refuse is growing out of
control because of over-packaging. The Garbage Project’s digs have determined, for example,
that in the early 1950s packaging was more than half of all wastes landfilled by volume. Today,
packaging is less than one third of the volume of the refuse deposited in landfills. Fresh sorts of
residential refuse have likewise documented that the packaging discarded per person has not
increased in the last twenty years; instead, it has decreased slightly. The major reason for this
change is not recycling, but partly industry source reduction -- making lighter, more crushable
packages and marketing more products as concentrates and, more recently, refillables -- and
partly consumer purchases in response to these innovations, such as light-weight PET 2-liter
soda bottles in place of glass bottles. When completed, the fresh/landfill refuse data record of
waste minimization achieved through source reduction is likely to provide striking images of
change which will help to make source reduction a more conscious consumer practice and not
just a meaningless term. If this occurs, then the link between technological development and
increased garbage generation will be bent, if not broken altogether.
GARBAGE PROJECT STUDENTS AND STAFF.

The Garbage Project is essentially just systematic records compiled by hands-on sorting of
household garbage. While many people find the results of Project studies interesting, most of
them also find the sorting process itself revolting. In fact, a few market researchers realized in
the 1950s that household refuse contained useful information, but after repeated experiments
they found that they could not pay people to sort refuse. Those hired either quit quickly or kept
sloppy records. Who would possibly be willing to rummage through someone else’s smelly trash
and keep accurate records of its contents? That is a good question.

The answer is a matter of public record; Rubbish! (a 1993 paperback book by [Link] and C.
Murphy, published by HarperPerennial) contains a list of more than 900 university students and
others who sorted refuse with the Garbage Project between 1973 and 1991. The intimate view
these and subsequent sorters have had of the materials which are discarded from households
much like their own has provided them with a unique perspective; and while they do not preach
to others, they are enthusiastically dedicated to providing everyone possible with the same
insights they have won from residential refuse by their hand sorts.

In attempting to share its results, the Garbage Project has focused most directly upon schools,
museums, and other avenues to students. The rationale is that young people can do the most with
the information the Project has acquired. Currently, the Project is most proud of two endeavors.
The first is the compilation of a WRAP (Waste Reduction Alternatives Program) Resource
Manual to be distributed to schools throughout Arizona and the U.S. The manual is designed to
help both students and teachers learn how their individual behaviors produce significant
quantities of garbage and how they can each make changes which will greatly decrease that
garbage. The second endeavor resulted in “The Garbage Dilemma,” an interactive video on
permanent display in the Science in American Life Hall at the Smithsonian’s National Museum
of American History. The video was the product of cooperation among the Garbage Project staff,
the Smithsonian’s design staff, and the Chedd-Angier Production Company. Schools and
museums -- not landfills -- are the kinds of environment where the Garbage Project hopes all of
its results will eventually come to reside.

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