Garbage In The Cities
Garbage In The Cities

Author: Martin V. Melosi

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2004-11-26

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 0822972689

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As recently as the 1880s, most American cities had no effective means of collecting and removing the mountains of garbage, refuse, and manure-over a thousand tons a day in New York City alone-that clogged streets and overwhelmed the senses of residents. In his landmark study, Garbage in the Cities, Martin Melosi offered the first history of efforts begun in the Progressive Era to clean up this mess.Since it was first published, Garbage in the Cities has remained one of the best historical treatments of the subject. This thoroughly revised and updated edition includes two new chapters that expand the discussion of developments since World War I. It also offers a discussion of the reception of the first edition, and an examination of the ways solid waste management has become more federally regulated in the last quarter of the twentieth century.Melosi traces the rise of sanitation engineering, accurately describes the scope and changing nature of the refuse problem in U.S. cities, reveals the sometimes hidden connections between industrialization and pollution, and discusses the social agendas behind many early cleanliness programs. Absolutely essential reading for historians, policy analysts, and sociologists, Garbage in the Cities offers a vibrant and insightful analysis of this fascinating topic.

Resisting Garbage
Resisting Garbage

Author: Lily Baum Pollans

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1477323708

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Resisting Garbage presents a new approach to understanding practices of waste removal and recycling in American cities, one that is grounded in the close observation of case studies while being broadly applicable to many American cities today. Most current waste practices in the United States, Lily Baum Pollans argues, prioritize sanitation and efficiency while allowing limited post-consumer recycling as a way to quell consumers’ environmental anxiety. After setting out the contours of this “weak recycling waste regime,” Pollans zooms in on the very different waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. While Boston’s local politics resulted in a waste-export program with minimal recycling, Seattle created new frameworks for thinking about consumption, disposal, and the roles that local governments and ordinary people can play as partners in a project of resource stewardship. By exploring how these two approaches have played out at the national level, Resisting Garbage provides new avenues for evaluating municipal action and fostering practices that will create environmentally meaningful change.

The Politics of Trash
The Politics of Trash

Author: Patricia Strach

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2023-01-15

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1501767003

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The Politics of Trash explains how municipal trash collection solved odorous urban problems using nongovernmental and often unseemly means. Focusing on the persistent problems of filth and the frustration of generations of reformers unable to clean their cities, Patricia Strach and Kathleen S. Sullivan tell a story of dirty politics and administrative innovation that made rapidly expanding American cities livable. The solutions that professionals recommended to rid cities of overflowing waste cans, litter-filled privies, and animal carcasses were largely ignored by city governments. When the efforts of sanitarians, engineers, and reformers failed, public officials turned to the habits and tools of corruption as well as to gender and racial hierarchies. Corruption often provided the political will for public officials to establish garbage collection programs. Effective waste collection involves translating municipal imperatives into new habits and arrangements in homes and other private spaces. To change domestic habits, officials relied on gender hierarchy to make the women of the white, middle-class households in charge of sanitation. When public and private trash cans overflowed, racial and ethnic prejudices were harnessed to single out scavengers, garbage collectors, and neighborhoods by race. These early informal efforts were slowly incorporated into formal administrative processes that created the public-private sanitation systems that prevail in most American cities today. The Politics of Trash locates these hidden resources of governments to challenge presumptions about the formal mechanisms of governing and recovers the presence of residents at the margins, whose experiences can be as overlooked as garbage collection itself. This consideration of municipal garbage collection reveals how political development often relies on undemocratic means with long-term implications for further inequality. Focusing on the resources that cleaned American cities also shows the tenuous connection between political development and modernization.

Disposable Cities
Disposable Cities

Author: Garth Andrew Myers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 135194360X

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Based on in-depth fieldwork in three cities, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and Lusaka, this book provides a critical analysis of the United Nations Sustainable Cities Program in Africa (SCP). Focusing on the SCP's policies for solid waste management, which was identified as the top priority problem by the SCP, the book examines the success of these pilot schemes and the SCP's record in building new relationships between people and government. It argues that the SCP has operated in a political vacuum, without recognition of the long and problematic histories and cultural politics of urban environmental governance in Eastern and Southern Africa. This book brings these cultural and political histories to the fore in its examination of the contemporary dynamics. In doing so, it not only provides an insightful analysis of the policies and outcomes for the SCP, but also puts forward a historically grounded critique of neoliberalism, good governance and sustainable development discourses.

Global Garbage
Global Garbage

Author: Christoph Lindner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 1317554426

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Global Garbage examines the ways in which garbage, in its diverse forms, is being produced, managed, experienced, imagined, circulated, concealed, and aestheticized in contemporary urban environments and across different creative and cultural practices. The book explores the increasingly complex relationship between globalization and garbage in locations such as Beirut, Detroit, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Manchester, Naples, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Tehran. In particular, the book examines how, and under what conditions, contemporary imaginaries of excess, waste, and abandonment perpetuate – but also sometimes counter – the imbalances of power that are frequently associated with the global metropolitan condition. This interdisciplinary collection will appeal to the fields of anthropology, architecture, film and media studies, geography, urban studies, sociology, and cultural analysis.

Garbage Wars
Garbage Wars

Author: David Naguib Pellow

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2004-09-17

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 026266187X

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A study of the struggle for environmental justice, focusing on conflicts over solid waste and pollution in Chicago. In Garbage Wars, the sociologist David Pellow describes the politics of garbage in Chicago. He shows how garbage affects residents in vulnerable communities and poses health risks to those who dispose of it. He follows the trash, the pollution, the hazards, and the people who encountered them in the period 1880-2000. What unfolds is a tug of war among social movements, government, and industry over how we manage our waste, who benefits, and who pays the costs. Studies demonstrate that minority and low-income communities bear a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards. Pellow analyzes how and why environmental inequalities are created. He also explains how class and racial politics have influenced the waste industry throughout the history of Chicago and the United States. After examining the roles of social movements and workers in defining, resisting, and shaping garbage disposal in the United States, he concludes that some environmental groups and people of color have actually contributed to environmental inequality. By highlighting conflicts over waste dumping, incineration, landfills, and recycling, Pellow provides a historical view of the garbage industry throughout the life cycle of waste. Although his focus is on Chicago, he places the trends and conflicts in a broader context, describing how communities throughout the United States have resisted the waste industry's efforts to locate hazardous facilities in their backyards. The book closes with suggestions for how communities can work more effectively for environmental justice and safe, sustainable waste management.

Beijing Garbage
Beijing Garbage

Author: Stefan Landsberger

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789463720304

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Why do central and local government initiatives aiming to curb the proliferation of garbage in Beijing and its disposal continue to be unsuccessful? Is the Uberization of waste picking through online-to-offline (O2O) garbage retrieval companies able to decrease waste and improve the lives of waste pickers? Most citizens of Beijing are well aware of the fact that their city is besieged by waste. Yet instead of taking individual action, they sit and wait for the governments at various levels to tell them what to do. And even if/when they adopt a proactive position, this does not last. Official education drives targeting the consumers are organized regularly and with modest success, but real solutions are not forthcoming. Various environmental non-governmental organizations are at work to raise the level of consciousness of the population, to change individual attitudes towards wasteful behavior, but seemingly with little overall effects.

What a Waste 2.0
What a Waste 2.0

Author: Silpa Kaza

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2018-12-06

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1464813477

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Solid waste management affects every person in the world. By 2050, the world is expected to increase waste generation by 70 percent, from 2.01 billion tonnes of waste in 2016 to 3.40 billion tonnes of waste annually. Individuals and governments make decisions about consumption and waste management that affect the daily health, productivity, and cleanliness of communities. Poorly managed waste is contaminating the world’s oceans, clogging drains and causing flooding, transmitting diseases, increasing respiratory problems, harming animals that consume waste unknowingly, and affecting economic development. Unmanaged and improperly managed waste from decades of economic growth requires urgent action at all levels of society. What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 aggregates extensive solid aste data at the national and urban levels. It estimates and projects waste generation to 2030 and 2050. Beyond the core data metrics from waste generation to disposal, the report provides information on waste management costs, revenues, and tariffs; special wastes; regulations; public communication; administrative and operational models; and the informal sector. Solid waste management accounts for approximately 20 percent of municipal budgets in low-income countries and 10 percent of municipal budgets in middle-income countries, on average. Waste management is often under the jurisdiction of local authorities facing competing priorities and limited resources and capacities in planning, contract management, and operational monitoring. These factors make sustainable waste management a complicated proposition; most low- and middle-income countries, and their respective cities, are struggling to address these challenges. Waste management data are critical to creating policy and planning for local contexts. Understanding how much waste is generated—especially with rapid urbanization and population growth—as well as the types of waste generated helps local governments to select appropriate management methods and plan for future demand. It allows governments to design a system with a suitable number of vehicles, establish efficient routes, set targets for diversion of waste, track progress, and adapt as consumption patterns change. With accurate data, governments can realistically allocate resources, assess relevant technologies, and consider strategic partners for service provision, such as the private sector or nongovernmental organizations. What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 provides the most up-to-date information available to empower citizens and governments around the world to effectively address the pressing global crisis of waste. Additional information is available at http://www.worldbank.org/what-a-waste.

Picking Up
Picking Up

Author: Robin Nagle

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2013-03-19

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1466836733

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A “gripping” behind-the-scenes look at New York’s sanitation workers by an anthropologist who joined the force (Robert Sullivan, author of Rats). America’s largest city generates garbage in torrents—11,000 tons from households each day on average. But New Yorkers don’t give it much attention. They leave their trash on the curb or drop it in a litter basket, and promptly forget about it. And why not? On a schedule so regular you could almost set your watch by it, someone always comes to take it away. But who, exactly, is that someone? And why is he—or she—so unknown? In Picking Up, the anthropologist Robin Nagle introduces us to the men and women of New York City’s Department of Sanitation and makes clear why this small army of uniformed workers is the most important labor force on the streets. Seeking to understand every aspect of the Department’s mission, Nagle accompanied crews on their routes, questioned supervisors and commissioners, and listened to story after story about blizzards, hazardous wastes, and the insults of everyday New Yorkers. But the more time she spent with the DSNY, the more Nagle realized that observing wasn’t quite enough—so she joined the force herself. Driving the hulking trucks, she obtained an insider’s perspective on the complex kinships, arcane rules, and obscure lingo unique to the realm of sanitation workers. Nagle chronicles New York City’s four-hundred-year struggle with trash, and traces the city’s waste-management efforts from a time when filth overwhelmed the streets to the far more rigorous practices of today, when the Big Apple is as clean as it’s ever been. “An intimate look at the mostly male work force as they risk injury and endure insult while doing the city’s dirty work [and] a fascinating capsule history of the department.” —Publishers Weekly “[Nagle’s] passion for the subject really comes to life.” —The New York Times “Evokes the physical and psychological toll of this dangerous, filthy, necessary work.” —Nature “Nagle joins the likes of Jane Jacobs and Jacob Riis, writers with the chutzpah to dig deep into the Rube Goldberg machine we call the Big Apple and emerge with a lyrical, clear-eyed look at how it works.” — Mother Jones

Solid Waste Management in the World's Cities
Solid Waste Management in the World's Cities

Author:

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9781849711708

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"In a rapidly urbanizing global society, solid waste management will be a key challenge facing all the world's cities. This publication provides a fresh perspective and new data on one of the biggest issues in urban development.