Archaeologists usually pick through ancient garbage. But Willim Rathje of Stanford University, USA, won’t wait. Since 1973, the self-styled ‘garbologist’ has sifted through at least 110,000kg of refuse to analyse modern consumption patterns and how quickly waste breaks down. He typically drills 15 to 20 ‘wells’ to the bottom of a landfill, some 30m deep, and pulls 20-30 tonnes of material from each well, which he and his students then catalogue. What he’s learned: dirty diapers make up less than two per cent of landfills, while paper accounts for 45 per cent. Hot dogs can last up to 24 years in a dump, and there is a correlation between cat ownership (litter) and tabloid newspapers (discarded copies). Rathe looks at other trash, too. One project involved scouring garbage cans in Arizona, cataloguing lolly wrappers and dental floss, toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes to compare survey claims about dental health with reality. The conclusion: there’s far more junk out there than ways to get it off your teeth.
This articles is from the Dec/Jan issue of Popular Science magazine. You can find more like it each month in Popular Science magazine.
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