The United States generates more municipal solid waste per capita than any other nation on Earth: roughly 292 million tons per year, or about 4.9 pounds per person per day. Trash collection in the United States is a local responsibility, managed by city and county governments, often with help from private companies.
Waste flows through an industrial ecosystem that spans garbage trucks, transfer stations, landfills, and waste-to-energy facilities. As of 2018, roughly half of all municipal solid waste is landfilled, about 32% is recycled or composted, and nearly 12% is burned for energy recovery.
New York City became the first US city with public sector garbage management in 1895. Around that time, less than 25% of American cities had waste management systems, but by 1910, 80% did.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
Robin Nagle rode with New York City sanitation workers to trace the hidden life of what we throw out. Her research explores what the things we discard reveal about who we are. 1440 explores the hidden life of trash.
The US produces roughly 292 million tons of municipal solid waste per year, about 4.9 pounds per person per day. Municipal solid waste includes food scraps, packaging, electronics, yard trimmings, and more. About 50% of the waste ends up in a landfill.
A single garbage truck can hold 10 to 12 tons of waste per load. After curbside pickup, trash is transported to a transfer station before its final trip to a landfill.
Mr. Trash Wheel uses a conveyor belt to scoop debris from the surface of Baltimore's Inner Harbor before it reaches the Chesapeake Bay, and it runs on a combination of water current and solar power.
In 2018, China stopped accepting most of the world's recyclables. This highlighted how dependent the US recycling system was on a single foreign buyer and forced cities to landfill materials they had once diverted.
Today, landfill engineering is far more complex than a hole in the ground, which was largely the system cities used less than a century ago. This video explains how it actually works.
In the early 1820s, an estimated 20,000 hogs roamed Manhattan's streets, feeding on trash that the city lacked a system to collect. Pigs were eventually banned at the urging of wealthy residents, who feared they would deter tourists and drive down property values.
The rationale supposes high-end, heavy-duty trash cans reduce litter and maintenance costs, justifying per-unit costs of close to $3,000 in some municipalities. But results are mixed, and some experiments using cheap 55-gallon drums were similarly effective.
In the 1980s, an Alabama businessman loaded 3,168 tons of mafia-controlled New York trash onto a barge. It was rejected by six states and three countries, sparking a media frenzy. This event helped convince Americans that they were running out of landfill space, giving rise to curbside recycling.
None of NYC's garbage is processed within the city. It is transported by truck, train, and barge to waste-to-energy facilities and landfills as far away as Ohio and South Carolina, a vast logistical operation.
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