Abstract
Death and taxes may be the only certainties in life, but taking out the trash is a daily routine for virtually every American household. Human beings have always discarded things, and in the more remote past, people often used discards for other purposes, such as empty oyster shells that formed impressive Native American ceremonial mounds. Until World War II, farmers and urbanites alike fed food scraps to pets, pigs, and other animals. Today, everything from worn out furniture to old cell phones is heaped into piles that comprise one of contemporary Florida's most easily identified landscape features: landfills. As a result the state's burgeoning population is not only running out of places to dispose of its trash, it is confronting two additional problems: 1) an increasing percentage of our trash is toxic and 2) we are wasting non-renewable resources. These circumstances have produced calls for increased recycling (recovery of materials) and energy recovery from solid waste.
Recommended Citation
Fairbanks, Andrew
(2012)
"Talking Trash: A Short History of Solid Waste Management in Florida,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 91:
No.
4, Article 5.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol91/iss4/5
