For Education

Education is a vital component of ensuring that waste is managed responsibly. We all should know where our waste is coming from, the steps we can do to decrease our waste production, and how we can influence others to think about their habits. You’ve hopefully learned this and more as you’ve explored Begin with the Bin.

Below you will find a historic overview of waste management from ancient to modern times.

History of Waste Management

Throughout history, human progress has been intrinsically tied to the management of waste due to its effect on public and environmental health. Waste management has affected human history in many ways just as it will in the future. The modern waste management industry has come far and with recycling and other advances – we are poised to go further. Below is a timeline of significant developments in waste management history.

Ancient History (10,000 BC to 400 AD)

In early human history, waste was mainly composed of ash from fires, wood, bones, and vegetable waste. The edible matter was used to feed animals and what remained was disposed of in the ground where it would decompose. The excavation of ancient rubbish dumps by archeologists reveals only tiny amounts of ash, broken tools and pottery, telling us that these early civilizations reused and repaired what they could.

Archeological excavations of the dirt or clay floors of these earliest living quarters have found that bits of waste matter that fell on the floor was simply packed into the floor over time or brushed aside. Archeologists have referred to this as the “fringe effect.” Households would bring in a supply of clean, fresh clay to spread over littered floors, resulting in the rise of elevation across early population centers. However, this solution became less viable as both population density and waste generation increased. As city populations grew, waste management systems became necessary to handle the waste stream. Crete, Athens and Rome are examples of ancient civilizations that began to establish rudimentary waste management systems. Rome established an organized waste collection teams to collect waste piled up in the streets. These workers transported the material in wagons to pits outside the city.[1]

Timeline

2000 BC
Bronze scrap recovery systems were in place in Europe.

Early records from the Han Dynasty (ca. second century BC) suggest that composting was a part of life in China as early as 2000 BC. These records include “fertilizer recipes” listing human excreta, animal waste, straw, plant ash, etc.

1500 BC
Archeological evidence shows that in the Cretan capital, Knossos, the Minoan people created dump sites where waste was placed in large pits and covered with earth.

500 BC
Historical records indicate that Athenians institutionalized techniques similar to those used in Crete by mandating that waste be deposited no less than one mile from the city and banning the dumping of refuse in city streets.

First century AD
Sheol was a dump outside of Jerusalem that periodically burned. It became synonymous with “Hades” or “hell” and is referenced in the Jewish Torah, the Christian Bible (Old and New Testaments) and the Islamic Quran. For example, the Bible writes “Your love for me is great; you have rescued me from the depths of Sheol (Psalm 86:13).”

250 AD
Archeological discoveries show that the Mayan Indians of Central America had dumps, which exploded occasionally and probably often burned. They also recycled their inorganic waste into fill for building projects.

200 AD
The first sanitation force is created by the Romans. Teams of two men walked along the streets picking up garbage and throwing it in a wagon.

[1] Pichtel, John, Waste Management Practices: Municipal, Hazardous, & Industrial, 2nd Edition, 2014

Middle Ages (400 AD to 1588 AD)

Until urban populations boomed, the garbage was not a threat. However, as cities grew, trash began piling up. When it piled up, it caused a stench, harbored rats and other pests, contaminated water supplies and led to the transmission of disease. The plagues that affected Europe from the 14th to the 16th centuries were often spread by the vermin that thrived in unsanitary urban conditions prevalent at that time. Some of the greatest plagues to curse humanity resulted from these unsanitary living conditions. Early waste management techniques developed during this period as a way to prevent the spread of disease.

Reuse and recycling existed, too, as a normal part of everyday life. Early recycling included feeding vegetable waste to livestock and using green waste as fertilizer. Pigs were often used as an efficient method of disposing of organic waste. Timber was salvaged and reused in construction and ship-building. Materials such as gold were melted down and re-cast numerous times.

Timeline

1297
In response to the increasing amount of waste deposited in towns in Britain, a law is passed requiring householders to keep the front of their house clear from refuse. It was largely ignored.

1340s
The Black Death spread to Western Europe and North Africa during the 1340s, resulting in an estimated 75 million deaths worldwide. The plague is estimated to have killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe’s population.

1350
By the end of 1350 the peak of the Black Death subsided, but there would continue to be outbreaks over the next few hundred years. The Great Plague of London in 1665-1666 is generally recognized as one of the last major outbreaks.

1354
English “Rakers” (who earlier were responsible for sweeping human excreta from gutters where chamber pots and privies were emptied) were ordered by King Edward III to rake all refuse from streets and alleys and remove it once a week. These men were some of the earliest garbagemen. They generally loaded the waste into carts and deposited it in the Thames or Fleet rivers.

1388
The English Parliament bans dumping of waste in ditches and public waterways.

1400
Garbage piles build up so high outside the gates of Paris that they interfere with the city’s defenses. Accounts tell of enemy soldiers clambering up the massive garbage piles to storm medieval city walls.

1407
The English government ruled that household rubbish was to remain indoors until it could be removed by the rakers (and either sold as compost or dumped in marshes). This preliminary attempt to manage and control waste was not particularly successful, but paved the way for further regulation.

Late 1400s
Medieval German cities require wagons bringing produce into the city to also carry waste out of the city to the countryside.

1500s
Spanish copper mines use scrap iron for the cementation of copper, a recycling practice still used today.

1515
A Stratford-upon-Avon court record shows that Shakespeare’s father was fined for ‘‘depositing filth in a public street.’’

1588
Elizabeth I grants special privileges for the collection of rags for papermaking in England.

Early America and the Industrial Revolution (1657 AD – 1899 AD)

During the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, Europe and the United States were rapidly developing in areas of product innovation, machinery development, and trade. These advances were stimulated by the availability of raw materials and growing ranks of laborers. This time of growth also created significantly greater amounts of waste. Government officials and the public alike were concerned. To avoid the potential problems associated with unmanaged waste in urban areas, the ““Age of Sanitation”” began. Many communities organized waste collection and instituted disposal systems in this sweeping effort aimed at maintaining public health.

These efforts did not put an end to scavengers, who performed a recycling function by selling what they could find in ’the rubbish. They were even able to sell dog feces, used by tanners for treating leather. Scavengers could be innovative. In England, scavengers were even classified by what they collected. They included:

  • Toshers, who worked in the sewers and were able to find coins, bits of metal, ropes and sometimes even jewelry.
  • Mud-larks, who scavenged river banks for salvageable material.
  • Dustmen, who collected ash from coal fires. These men, women and children worked at dust yards to sieve the brieze (coarse section of the dust) from the finer portions so it could be used as a soil conditioner. The “fines” could be mixed with clay to make bricks.

Timeline

1657
New Amsterdam (now New York) passes a law against dumping waste in the streets.

1690
Rittenhouse Mill, America’s first paper mill, opens in Philadelphia and made paper from recycled cotton, linen, and used paper.

1710
Colonists in Virginia commonly bury their trash. Holes are filled with building debris, broken glass or ceramic objects, oyster shells and animal bones. They also throw away hundreds of suits of armor that were sent to protect them from arrows of native inhabitants.

1739
Benjamin Franklin leads an effort to petition the Pennsylvania Assembly to stop commercial waste dumping in Philadelphia and remove tanneries from Philadelphia’s commercial district, which some historians consider the beginning of the environmental movement.

1757
Benjamin Franklin starts the first American municipal street-cleaning operation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1776
The first metal recycling in America occurs when patriots in New York City melted down a statue of King George III and made it into bullets.

1792
Benjamin Franklin uses slaves to carry Philadelphia’’s waste downstream.

1834
Charleston, WV, enacts a law protecting vultures from hunters, as the birds helped eat the city’s garbage.

1842
A report in Great Britain links disease to filthy environmental conditions and helps launch the “Age of Sanitation.”

1848
The Public Health Act of 1848 begins the process of waste regulation in Britain.

1850
Junk dealers in Reno, NV, scavenge personal belongings from the Oregon, Santa Fe and California trails, where pioneers had abandoned items on their long trek west.

1860
Residents of Washington, DC, dump garbage and slop into alleys and streets, resulting in animals like pigs and dogs roaming freely throughout the city. Rats and cockroaches infest most dwellings, including the White House.

1864
Health officials in Memphis, TN, hypothesize a possible correlation between the spread of Yellow Fever in the Memphis area and the garbage being dumped throughout the city. To reduce the threat of disease, residents are told to take their garbage to specific locations on the edge of town.

1866
New York City’’s Metropolitan Board of Health declares war on garbage, forbidding the “throwing of dead animals, garbage or ashes into the streets.” (Years later, it is reported that New York scavengers still removed 15,000 horse carcasses annually, most of which had belonged to the city and pulled street cars.)

1872
New York stops dumping its garbage from a platform built over the East River (but they continue dumping it into the Atlantic Ocean for decades).

1874
Energy from waste begins its development in Great Britain as the first “destructor” is designed and constructed in Nottingham. Destructors are prototype incineration plants that burn mixed fuel producing steam to generate electricity. Over the next 30 years, 250 destructors are built, but they fall out of favor because emissions (ashes, dust, charred paper, etc.) fall onto surrounding neighborhoods.

1875
In order to prevent mass scavenging and to cleanup the country, the British Public Health Act of 1875 is created to give authority to waste collection. From this act comes the first concept of a movable garbage receptacle. This first concept is created to store ash waste and is collected/emptied weekly.

1878
Memphis, TN, Mayor John Flippin organizes garbage collection at homes and businesses using small wooden carts pulled by mules.

1880
Historical data shows that less than one quarter of America’’s cities can boast of a municipally organized system for disposing of waste.

1885
The first American garbage incinerator is built on Governor’s Island, NY. (Over the next two decades, nearly 200 garbage incinerators are built throughout the United States.)

1889
In Washington, DC, a health officer reports that “Appropriate places for [refuse] are becoming scarcer year by year, and the question as to some other method of disposal ... must soon confront us. Already the inhabitants in proximity to the public dumps are beginning to complain...”

1890
The British Paper Company is established specifically to make paper and board from recycled materials. The recycled materials are obtained from organizations such as the Salvation Army and rag-and-bone men.

It is reported that as many as 750,000 watermelon rinds are discarded during the summer months in New York.

1893
The Boston Sanitary Committee finds that to get rid of their garbage and avoid paying fees for its collection, a number of citizens “burned it, wrapped it up in paper and carried it on their way to work and dropped it when unobserved, or threw it into vacant lots or into the river.”

1894
Harper’s Weekly reports that “...the garbage problem is the one question of sanitation that is uppermost in the minds of local authorities [in the United States].”

The citizens of Alexandria, VA, become disgusted by the sight of barge loads of garbage floating down the Potomac River from Washington, DC. They start sinking the barges upriver from their community.

1895
New York’s Street Cleaning Commissioner organizes the first U.S. comprehensive system of public-sector garbage management. The service employs 2,000 white-clad employees, known as “White Wings,” to clear the streets and cart off garbage to dumps, incinerators, the Atlantic Ocean and the very first U.S. waste sorting plant for recycling.

1896
Waste reduction plants, which compress organic wastes to extract grease, oils, and other by-products, are introduced to the U.S. from Vienna. These plants later are closed because of their noxious emissions.

1899
The Federal Rivers and Harbors Act restricts dumping in all navigable rivers in order to keep them open for shipping.

Continue reading here: Why Is Environmental Stewardship Important?

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Readers' Questions

  • hana
    Is dumpster diving illegal in memphis tn?
    1 year ago
  • Dumpster diving is not illegal in Memphis, TN. In Tennessee, there is no specific law prohibiting dumpster diving. As long as you are not trespassing or otherwise breaking the law, it is not illegal.