Advances

22 Scientific American, October 2010

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How did you get interested in trash? When I was a child, my dad and I went hiking in the Adirondack Mountains, and we spent hours in a forest that seemed like we were the first human beings to ever walk in. And then we arrived at our campsite; behind the lean-to there was a dump left by hikers who had come before. I was absolutely astonished that people I assumed cared about the environment would in fact trash it. Who did they think was going to come and clean it up? And that question stayed with me.

How do you describe your job at cocktail parties? I’m an anthropologist by training and by passion, and right now I’m working on a project with the New York City Department of Sanitation that grew out of questions I had around issues of waste. When I framed [the question of] “who cleans up after us” anthropologically, I came to know the men and women whose work it is to pick up the garbage, to sweep the streets, to plow the snow. After I had been doing fieldwork for a while, I actually took the job as a sanitation worker and was trained to drive the trucks. But I realized I couldn’t hold that title and my N.Y.U. job at the same time, so I became an anthropologist-in-residence, a position from which I can organize a museum and pull together an oral history project of sanitation folk.

Are there other sanitation anthropologists? In many ways, ar-chaeology rests on the study of garbage, except that the garbage is a few hundred or a few thousand years old. But there are also some archaeologists looking at contemporary household waste—Bill

Rathje is one of the key founders of that particular discipline. There are other anthropologists work-ing with sanitation workers, but I know of no one else with the title “anthropologist-in-residence.”

Why have we created a global economy that generates such vast quantities of waste? That’s rooted in the basic structures of capitalism, which requires perpetual renewal to continue to gen-erate profit at the pace that is now understood

to be necessary for local, regional and global economic health. It’s the rhythms of our economic structures that have set up these patterns.

What are some surprising things you’ve learned by analyz-ing garbage? In affluent neighborhoods, I was profoundly im-pressed with how much good stuff rich people throw away.

—Nicholette Zeliadt

Scient ist in the Fie ld

Trash Is Her TreasureA New York University anthropologist discusses why she has spent the past four years working alongside

New York City’s garbage men and women

S c i e n c e i n d e x

FactFallacy

100

10 20 30 40 60 70 80 90

0Conservapedia, the online encyclopedia run by conservative lawyer Andrew Schlafly, implies that Einstein’s theory of relativity is part of a liberal plot.

40Government scientists report that three quarters of the oil that spilled into the gulf is “gone.” Newer, independent evidence suggests far more remains.

60Last year Toyota claimed that electronic problems were not to blame in reports of sudden acceleration in its cars. Preliminary U.S. government reports show that the company was right.

50

name Robin Nagletitle Anthropologist-in- Residence, New York City Department of Sanitation location New York City

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