Edward Humes Garbology Summary

Waste consumption in the United States has been a really big problem of this century and our waste habits are even a bigger problem. The book of Garbology, written by Edward Humes, uncovers the habits of Americans. Humes writes about a woman in chapter 11 named Bea Johnson who is an advocate for not producing trash. Humes states she has been producing no more than a size of a glass a year on waste. Johnson has also been finding ways how to produce less trash and she came to the conclusion if there was less trash being produced the happier her family was.
Humes also talks about a man named Bill Rathje who was an anthropologist at first. Then changed his field of study to garbology and has been doing studies on the production of trash by the …show more content…
According to the report, we have produced 60,560 tons or 121,121,000 pounds more in 2008 than in 1993. Which we have increased the amount of waste by a total of 54% in the year 2008. In Garbology, Humes gives reasoning to this increase of trash. In chapter 3 of Garbology, Humes states, “Printer ink, A popular media journal of the day, suggested that the mission of marketers had to be centered on the fact that 'wearing things out does not produce prosperity, but buying things does… Any plan that increases consumption is justifiable '”. Humes then states, “Even President Eisenhower was suggesting that shopping was tantamount to a patriotic act. Now, this happened after a world war so everyone was very patriotic at the time so they followed him. But Humes also insists “when President Eisenhower was asked what should people be buying to bolster the economy he answered buy anything and this led to everyone buying want they want rather than what they need” (Page 65 Garbology). Also, during the introduction of Garbology, Humes states that presidents used to fret that Americans didn 't save enough. Now they are worried about Americans will not shop enough to help with the economy (Page 7