Resisting Garbage: The Politics of Waste Management in American Cities

Resisting Garbage offers a new approach to understanding waste removal and recycling practices in American cities, focusing on case studies of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. It highlights the importance of local politics in shaping waste management strategies and provides insights into how cities can foster practices for environmental change.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 02 November 2021
Publisher: University of Texas Press

Resisting Garbage presents a novel approach to understanding waste removal and recycling practices in American cities, grounded in detailed case studies while having broad applicability to many American cities today. Lily Baum Pollans contends that most current waste practices in the United States prioritize sanitation and efficiency while allowing limited post-consumer recycling as a means to alleviate consumers' environmental concerns. After outlining the contours of this "weak recycling waste regime," Pollans delves into the distinct waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the past forty years. While Boston's local politics led to a waste-export program with minimal recycling, Seattle developed new frameworks for thinking about consumption, disposal, and the roles that local governments and ordinary people can play as partners in a project of resource stewardship. By examining how these two approaches have unfolded at the national level, Resisting Garbage offers fresh avenues for evaluating municipal action and promoting practices that will yield environmentally significant outcomes.

Dimension: 229 x 152 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781477323700