Rubbish! The Archeology of Garbage: What Our Garbage Tells Us About Ourselves
by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy | Nonfiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0816521433 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0816521433 Global Overview for this book
1 journaler for this copy...
I've heard snippets about this book over the years, and I ran across it yesterday at a used book store. Some interesting facts from the back cover:
- A year's subscription to the New York Times is the equivalent, by volume in a landfill, of 18,660 crushed aluminum cans of 14,969 crushed Bic Mac clamshells.
- Taken together, the homes in a typical community throw out as much hazardous waste as the commercial establishments.
- If you bought the chemicals contained in nail polish in fifty-five-gallon drums instead of half-ounce bottles, you would be legally required to dump them in a hazardous waste disposal site -- yet in Tucson alon 350,000 bottles of nail polish are thrown out every year.
- The most-often-tossed-out hazardous waste material in low-income homes is auto-care products; in upper-class homes it is lawn and garden products....