Waste Not, Want Not

Strasser — who previously penned Never Done: A History of American Housework and Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market — paints a vibrant portrait of domestic culture before the advent of trash collections. Through her rich details, Strasser documents how American culture shifted from waste consciousness to consumer consciousness. And how a society that once criticized the act of disposal now encourages it.

Ironically, Strasser points out, trash can be viewed as a measure of our advancement: The more we create, the better our standard of living. Trash, we are to understand, has played a significant role in the rise of consumer culture and the “planned obsolescence” that now propels the economy. The notion that one can quickly and easily dispose of unwanted items, either because they had outlived their usefulness or become outdated, gave rise to consumer demand, translating into an increase in manufactured products. Yet Strasser downplays the benefits made possible in the cultural shift. Economic growth freed Americans from the burdens of a century ago when trash picking was necessary, while tightening the gap between middle-class America and the rich — a divide that until the twentieth century was far more pronounced in daily life.

Long before government agencies peddled recycling for the benefit of Mother Earth, Americans recycled everything for personal survival. “Wastebaskets were actually rare in households where refuse could be burned for fuel or sold to peddlers and where much of the clothing and everyday objects were still handmade by women who might put any scrap to good use.”

Objects served a variety of functions after their primary use. Women boiled food scraps into soup or fed it to animals. Clothes were worn until they wore out and then dissected for rags. Since most products were not available for general consumption, each household was responsible for providing for its own. Grease, for example, was valued as an ingredient for making soaps and candles. And any leftovers were saved for their trade-in value.

As a result, collecting and scavenging became an industry. Itinerant peddlers journeyed across the country, collecting broken household goods, repairing them and trading or selling their inventory to rural and city folk. “This trade in used goods,” writes Strasser, “amounted to a system for reuse and recycling that provided crucial domestic sources of raw materials for early industrialism.”

This does not make for a picturesque life. When items could finally be trashed, they were simply thrown into the streets, or out the back windows and doors. The garbage problem made municipal intervention a necessity. “The Washington D.C. city council,” writes Strasser, “set aside fifteen hundred dollars during the summer of 1837 . . . intended for ‘purging the streets and alleys of accumulated filth and garbage.” Diseases spread, and with public health a growing concern by the late 1800s, progressive policy advocates and leading home economists lobbied for refuse practices that would promote better hygiene.

The ranks of manufacturers, advertisers, and home economists soon began to preach the benefits of disposable products. Disposable paper products promoted cleanliness, and public service announcements and pamphlets paved the way for their demand. The major shift, Strasser laments, came when manufacturers adopted the notion that objects should become outdated and trashed, even if they functioned perfectly. People began to buy as much for styling and modernizing as they did out of necessity.

Yet Strasser downplays the benefits middle-class America enjoyed as a result of the trend. The ability to dispose of an item simply because it was outdated lent more people the distinction of a leisured lifestyle. And planned obsolescence did not mean that everything ended up in the trash. In fact, these practices enabled the institutionalization of charitable networks, long before government welfare. Groups like Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society became vital organizations for both the waste trade and for poorer citizens.

Strasser seems to mourn the loss of the wasteless culture. As she brings her history to the present day, she pays significant attention to the rise in garbage over the years, replacing the systematic reuse of every single household item. The same progressives who once advocated disposing refuse (for health’s sake) have evolved into a different voice, now critical of consumer America’s waste-making mentality.

And yet, it is precisely the shift to consumerism that enabled environmentalism to become a political priority. Strasser notes that individuals will endure some inconvenience for a perceived public benefit. But for all the guilt laid at the consumers’ feet by environmental activists, the ability to create trash symbolizes the improved standard of living everyone enjoys. Americans’ willingness to discard and acquire — something inimical to nineteenth-century mentalities — ushered in an era that made improved technologies marketable.

In a society where time is money, few would sacrifice disposables in order to return to the days of saving grease to make candles. But the old saving mentalities have not entirely disappeared. People still buy used products for repair and reuse. The distinction is that people refurbish as a hobby rather than by necessity. Americans now spend millions on an industry devoted to the “art” of restoring and making new or stylish what once might have been trash. A multimedia industry — including Home Depots, cable networks such as Home & Garden Television, and the Bob Vila and Martha Stewart empires — has boomed over the last decade, playing on the notion that one man’s trash can be another man’s treasure.

But Strasser succeeds in proving that “matters deemed inconsequential are often significant.” Things that were luxuries a century ago are now considered necessities. The environment is indeed a concern, as is the growing problems of where to put trash. But that is the price to pay for progress. Certainly it is progress that would not have occurred so quickly if not for the willingness of Americans to toss away what they don’t need anymore.

Maureen Sirhal is editorial assistant at Policy Review.