Garbage! America Faces a Growing Crisis of Volume

Last month, in San Jose, police entered the home of 70-year-old Floria Jacobson after neighbors complained that her house gave off a disgusting odor. The house was brimming with more than 25 tons of rotting garbage, infested with maggots, mice and rats. Charged with violating state laws on storing refuse, Jacobson argued that most of the heap was books and clothing she was saving.

A few weeks later, San Jose police discovered a second residence overrun with trash. “There were paths going around to the various parts of the house,” said Sgt. Bud Davis, who investigated the makeshift dump where a couple and their three children lived. California authorities uncover a couple of similar cases every year, Davis said matter-of-factly. “These people felt they had a right to live that way.”

Disposable Society

Although tons of putrid garbage in the living room is unthinkable for most people, some experts say it is not a farfetched analogy of where the trash crisis now facing this nation is headed. As dumps fill up before their time, skies darken with more incinerator smoke and garbage barges float stranded at sea, ecologists warn that without changing the way Americans live, the nation’s fate may resemble that of the notorious Collyer brothers. The two New York hermits, Homer and Langley Collyer, died in 1947 in their Fifth Avenue townhouse, ensnared by 120 tons of decaying rubbish, filth and junk they had jammed to the ceilings.

But most people would just as soon wash their hands of garbage--not collect it. In a nation devoted to disposability, the motive is, at all costs, to dispense with the waste, the issue, even the impending crisis, in a tidy plastic bag at the curb. No mess. No fuss. No problem. There is a national reluctance to take a hands-on approach to resolving the refuse threat.

Recent images of syringes on the beach have created a greater awareness of the crisis and even provoked some public ire. The statistics are no longer shocking: The United States produces more than 400,000 tons of trash a day; by the year 2000, it is projected, each person will produce 6 pounds of refuse every day. But the fact that the garbage glut lately is fueled more by indifference than ignorance has led some experts to search for answers in what Americans are thinking about waste rather than what they’re throwing out.

“Changing people’s beliefs and attitudes does not get them to change what they do,” said Richard Detweiler, professor of psychology at Drew University in Madison, N.J. Public resistance to handling the garbage problem, he said, echoes research on people who refuse to get timely tetanus inoculations and on those who don’t bother to get dental care for tooth decay and gum disease. Like the refuse phenomenon, both are widely understood as health threats, but people aren’t necessarily motivated to do much about them.

Little Response

Initially, researchers provided general warnings but got an insignificant response. “The rationality was there, but that didn’t change people’s behavior,” Detweiler said. In effect, the studies showed that to get a horse to drink, it has to be led to water. The follow-up study not only warned people of the threats but told them there is a solution and gave them step-by-step instructions on what they could do.

“You have to establish an easy way that people can carry through,” Detweiler said. “Part of the problem is that we haven’t really agreed on the solution. We can burn it in incinerators, but that pollutes the air. We can recycle cans and glass and newspapers, but most communities don’t have good vehicles to carry that out. So you end up with solutions that are ambiguous or unclear. Some people then think the solution is as bad as what we already have.”

When Alan Durning was a child in the early 1970s, his parents used to bundle up the bottles and haul them to a dump in nearby Seattle where glass was separated for recycling. “That was one of my favorite things to do because I could break bottles and not get into trouble,” said Durning, explaining his motivation for taking personal responsibility for his own garbage. Unlike most Americans, the Washington, D.C., resident separates his disposables for recycling--one solution that experts believe could eliminate half the problem with widespread participation.

Typically, Durning separates all glass bottles, aluminum cans and paper from the rest of his refuse. He further separates the newsprint paper from the high-quality or white office paper. Then, every second and fourth Saturday of the month, he drives the stuff a few miles to a site where a local citizens’ group recently contracted a commercial recycler to truck it away.

“I’m not one of these people who saves every egg carton and stacks them away like a squirrel in the basement for some use 20 years from now,” Durning said. “I do like to look at the trash that I throw out and see what it is.”

Paper Predominates

A cursory inspection, Durning said, would reveal that the usual street-side can is crammed mostly with paper--with recycling potential not only for lessening the refuse load but also for saving trees. “A bunch more is junk mail,” he said, “and that’s tough to recycle because most people don’t want to open the envelope. Current recycling processes require that you take the sales pitches out of the envelope and remove all labels and cellophane. When I’m feeling virtuous, I do it,” he said.

But Durning and some experts admit that virtue alone is not reward enough to persuade most Americans to grapple with the hassle. Lynn Kahle believes it may take just a few pennies more. Although the days of kids’ searching roadside brush for soda bottles to collect the deposits are long gone, the notion of a modest reward for the ecologically virtuous shouldn’t be dismissed, he contends. “Most people would be willing if it were convenient and if there was some kind of small benefit in it for them,” said Kahle, a consumer behavior psychologist at the University of Oregon and author of the 1983 book, “Social Values and Social Changes.”

In studying positive public response to the Oregon bottle law (outlawing disposable bottles and requiring deposits on returnables), Kahle determined that often a few cents plus peer pressure has added up to some common sense in some communities. “If we think everybody else is doing it, we’re more likely to participate,” he said.

“Oddly, the mere act of doing the recycling makes people think about why they are doing it and they start justifying it. They start feeling good about contributing to society. It’s a little backward, but that’s how it works.”

According to a report last year by the Worldwatch Institute, the nation’s garbage crisis is largely a packaging problem. The Washington-based nonprofit research organization reported that packaging of products--from the plastic containers for microwave convenience foods to handy paperboard packages--accounts for about 30% of the weight and 50% of the volume of household waste.

Christopher Flavin, vice president of research at Worldwatch, said recycling is not likely to catch on with more than a tiny minority of the public anytime soon. But he is one of a growing number of ecologists who believe that, by buying products that use less packaging or that use materials less troublesome to the environment, a dent can be made in the garbage crisis without getting dirty hands.

“The individual’s approach to this problem is critical,” Flavin said. “You can no longer pretend that the problem ceases to exist when the truck arrives at the curb. People are aware that whatever is done, it is going to have an important impact on their lives.”

That’s why Kay Willis is talking trash to mothers nationwide. The founder 13 years ago of an organization called Mothers Matter decided last spring that “the world’s oldest unpaid profession,” as she calls motherhood, could make a difference in the garbage crisis.

Reaching Out to Mothers

“There are 64 million mothers, so I’m trying to reach out and get their attention,” said Willis, herself a 58-year-old mother of 10, whose youngest son, an environmental planner, sparked her interest in the problem. “If we make sure that the products we’re buying are packaged in paper or biodegradable materials, we can effect a tremendous change.”

Among Willis’ shopping suggestions: Choose the traditional recyclable cardboard egg cartons rather than the Styrofoam ones that aren’t biodegradable; buy milk in paper cartons rather than plastic bottles; ask for paper rather than plastic bags for produce and fruit and for checkout. She urges mothers to keep in mind when grocery shopping whether a product will decompose naturally, whether it can be recycled, whether it is environmentally friendly.

“In 1987, all the garbage collected in the United States, if it were spread out, would fill a 24-lane highway from Boston to Los Angeles, at least a foot deep,” Willis said. She has put her foot down in her own kitchen: shopping more carefully and separating her recyclables, she has cut her own garbage in half. “Taking individual action is for the future of our children. Mothers will do almost anything that is important for their children.”

E. Scott Geller has suggested to automobile manufacturers that they make removable inserts with separate bins for recycling that would fit into the trunk of all cars.

“And here’s the key,” said the professor of psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va. “When we go to get gas, we dump our removable bins from the trunk into large bins at the gas stations. Now we have a cost-effective redistribution process that is part of our everyday schedule.”

Geller believes that Americans have to consider far-out ideas to resolve the garbage crunch because standard solutions grate against human nature. “You’ve got to find something that fits with everyday behavior,” he said. “We humans do not behave in ways that are good for us in the long run. We don’t wear safety belts. We drive while alcoholically impaired. The bottom line is we don’t want to be inconvenienced.”

But Geller has hope that human nature can be redirected. He mentions a Confucian principle: “Tell them and they’ll forget; demonstrate and they’ll remember; involve them and they’ll understand.” Geller stationed one of his “nature’s disposal units” in the Virginia Tech cafeteria. The 2-foot-by-3-foot box houses red worms that feed on table scraps.

“The worms take care of the scraps completely,” Geller said. “There is no odor. It means that you don’t have to put your food waste into the garbage container.”

America’s foremost “garbologist” takes exception when asked if he still pokes through other people’s castoffs. “We don’t poke, we sort,” said William Rathje, the University of Arizona archeology professor who started analyzing the contents of garbage cans in 1973. Fifteen years later, he has graduated to landfills.

“We need to have a more accurate perception of what we throw away so we can have a better idea of what we can do about it,” he said. “We have all these myths that are dead wrong about garbage.”

Based on his recent excavations of San Francisco Bay and Chicago landfills whose contents date back to 1970, Rathje said the biggest myth is “the compost theory of landfills”--the notion that paper and most other materials dumped there degrade after a few months.

“That just doesn’t happen--at least not rapidly,” he said. “We’ve found newspapers and magazines from the 1970s that are just as readable today as they were then. We’ve found hot dogs that almost look edible.”

Newsprint the Culprit

Another myth that needs debunking, Rathje said, is the concept about what is hogging the landfill space. Styrofoam from fast-food packaging, he said, isn’t the culprit that it is thought to be. “It’s only one-quarter of 1%. Newspapers are the largest single component in landfill waste--ranging from 11% to 16% by weight or volume. And they leach lead and cadmium from the ink when water goes through landfills. If people really want to make a change, it is perfectly possible to recycle newspapers.”

Rathje, however, is in no rush to get Americans to recycle. “I don’t think we should freak out (because) the country is taking awhile to get into curb-side recycling. That’s a blessing because it is giving industry time to figure out what to do with the stuff. There are just so many things that can be made of recycled newspaper.”

Rathje further states that to reduce garbage drastically would mean radical changes in society. To reduce the volume of garbage would reduce the gross national product, jobs and the availability of products, he argues. “Garbage is ingrained in our culture. Our garbage is us. We have to treat it that way. You can’t go in and mandate that we get rid of garbage. We have some tough trade-offs to make.”

In the heart of Manhattan, New York artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles is creating art to alter the nation’s perception of the refuse crisis. Called “Flow City,” it is a walk-in welcome center scheduled for completion in two years, located atop a garbage transfer station on the Hudson River.

“No sanitation facility has ever had public access on a permanent basis before,” said the artist-in-residence of the New York Sanitation Department. “All facilities have been off-limits to the public. Not having access allows us to delude ourselves that the garbage goes away and will never darken our doorsteps again.”

Ukeles has a reputation for focusing on attitude in her art. In another of her projects, “Touch Sanitation Performance,” she personally shook hands with each New York sanitation worker, repeating this statement: “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.”

Said Ukeles, “That was a factual statement, not a do-gooder thing. We have to be able to accept that we create waste, to separate this human being who collects it from the waste, to understand that we have a responsibility not to poison the Earth.”

Sees Her Challenge

In designing Flow City, Ukeles hopes to give that challenge a “sense of scale.” The 59th Street entrance leads to an enclosed ramp a city block long that is constructed mostly of garbage--one part of the wall is made of used batteries, another of recycled paper products, shredded plastic, crushed glass and metals, “like an alphabet of reuse,” Ukeles said.