Hello. This blog is on an official hiatus of indeterminate length. I hope one day to return to this project, but currently don’t have the time to be a very good garblogger. Please enjoy the archives. Also, someone sent me this link today, which cracked me up. What better way to go out than with a classic Oscar sketch? Hasta luego, trashies!
xoxo
Leila
Hey trashies, I know it has been a while, but have you been following this crazy story about the secret pot farm hidden underneath Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company in Brooklyn? You may remember that back in 2010, Brooklyn rooftop beekeepers complained that their honey had turned bright red and way too sweet thanks to bees feasting on the super sweet discarded cherry waste discarded by the same factory.
Cherry red honey (photo via Grist)
We posted about it here in 2012, along with links to a similar phenomenon in France where beekeepers documented blue and green honey later traced to M&M factory waste; and I even tasted some mildly affected honey during a tour of Eco Brooklyn’s show house.
It turns out, that in addition to possible illegal dumping — allegations police investigated after bee keepers complained — the factory served as a front to a local marijuana farm. And as you may have read, the owner of the factory shot himself when investigators found his pot plants. A tragic end to a fascinating story. Inquiries continue to determine whether the dumping of cherry waste has contributed to polluting the water in Red Hook, a neighborhood already shouldering more than its fair share of industrial strain on the local environment.
Nice detective work, bees! Someone needs to make a movie out of this one.
Since Iran has been thoroughly eliminated from the competition, and the U.S. has safely passed to the next round, I have through the weekend to watch some good soccer without worrying about the fate of my nations. And that means more time to wonder what happens to all the World Cup trash. This piece on Brazilian catadores sorting tourist trash for recyclable materials warmed by heart.
Even more fascinating, however, is the Pimp My Carroça project, which I discovered via this fabulous CityLab article about street artists making trash cans look like backpacks worn by squat men. From what I can gather, the name translates roughly as “pimp my trash cart” and involves raising the visibility of Brazil’s trash pickers and the challenges they face using creative art projects.
(photo via Metalgassi)
Both the first article and the art collective note that Brazil boasts one of the world’s highest rates of can recycling, thanks in large part to the catadores.
To tell the story of this community, French filmmaker Rémi Pinaud (in collaboration with Pimp My Carroça) hopes to complete his project O Cafofo, or The Castle, a fictional film about a trash picker and his two daughters whose home in a high rise housing project in São Paulo comes under threat when the city starts “cleaning up” to host the World Cup.
You can support the project here.
I love World Cup season. No matter where I am in the world, it brings me joy to find international clusters of people huddled around televisions and to hear multilingual cheers and sporadic honking in the streets. I also love all the colorful news coverage the event sparks, like this amazing story about Japanese fans in Rio sticking around to clean up trash in the stadium after their team lost to Cote D’Ivoire.
Photo via Sportskeeda
I love this story so much. Also, sorry I haven’t posted in a while, much more to come.
Back in January of 2008, I came across an NYC event listing that seemed to have been drafted just for me: a presentation given by a group of NYU anthropology students who had spent a semester planning a museum to honor the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). Professor Robin Nagle, DSNY’s anthropologist in residence co-taught the course.
Photo via RobinNagle.com
That’s how I discovered that such a position existed and that’s the first time I got to hear Nagle lecture on the history of trash in New York City. Her passion for the subject came across so clearly that I knew right away this idea of a museum honoring the sanitation department constituted more than a hypothetical class assignment. We discussed it a bit more one Trashtastic Tuesday; and a couple years after that I got her to join me on a panel about art and garbage that took place inside an RV parked on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Since then, I have kept up with Nagle mainly through social media (she has a badass Instagram feed) and by following the academic waste blog she founded, Discard Studies.
Then, a few weeks ago, my friend Oriana Leckert of Brooklyn Spaces asked if I wanted to join her at an event that merged her passion for unique creative venues with my passion for trash at the fabulous headquarters of Atlas Obscura. Nagle gave a fabulous lecture on the history of New York City’s struggle to deal with our trash. Highlights included amazing footage shot by Thomas Edison of sanitation workers loading a trash barge in 1903. Did you know Edison took little slice of life vignettes of the city and that you can view them all on YouTube thanks to the Library of Congress? You’re welcome.
After the lecture, I went home and opened up my copy of Picking Up, Nagle’s wonderful book in which she chronicles her time on the job as a sanitation worker and puts a human face on the corps of people who deal with our trash once we throw it “away.”
Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City
The book is full of great anecdotes, personal stories and incredible facts. It’s a must read for all trashes and is now available in paperback. Go forth and purchase.
Glad (you know, the company that makes, among other things, trash bags) is teaming up with the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) for an Earth Day (April 10) unveiling of a photo series featuring U.S. families and the trash they produce over the course of one week.
Charlene Wimms and Donell Brant of NYC, New York, with their children Darius Brant, 9, and Terrard Wimms, 16, surrounded by a week’s worth of their recyclables and landfill trash, in February. Recyclable items are on the left-hand side of the photo. Items destined for landfill are to the right. Their total household waste for this week was 28.9 lb. Seventy-nine percent of it (22.9 lb) was landfill and twenty-one percent of it was recyclables (6 lb). Photo credit: Peter Menzel.
Photojournalist Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio interviewed and photographed eight families across the country for the project, gave each family instructions to save their trash and recycling for a week, then Menzel and D’Alusio cleaned and arranged the waste for very special family portraits. I normally dread Earth Day, because as a trash blogger it means tons of extra email for weeks from companies pitching inane (and often not very Earth-friendly) products and campaigns. I have to say, though, that I like this project. It’s trash specific, artistic and informative. They call it Waste in Focus.
New Yorkers can see the photos this Thursday afternoon (April 10) on display at Union Square.
A long overdue roundup of trash in the news:
My friend John Kearney took this photo today in Prospect Park of all the broken plastic sleds.
In related New York Winter news, I can’t get enough of this girl and her dog.
Elizabeth Royte and her book Garbage Land were among my first and favorite discoveries as a garblogger. On Valentine’s day, it seems appropriate to share this recent piece she did for medium.com on “Sex, trash and nature in the city.”
My favorite thing about this article is that Royte reserves her judgement for the littering, but not the public lovemaking, that goes on in our beloved Prospect Park.
I’ve had my SodaStream Penguin since the company sent me one to try out in 2009 and, as reported on this site, I love making seltzer at home. Or at least, I used to love it. A couple of years ago, a politically active friend told me that the company operates in a West Bank settlement, a fact I found alarming and upsetting. It was also a fact I had trouble verifying in a cursory Google search. Since then my roommate and I, who both love bubbly water, have done a fair amount of research online and through conversations with friends working in the field of human rights. Verdict: SodaStream does operate in illegally occupied land in the West Bank and therefore will receive no more money from our housefold.
My first romp with the Penguin
To meet our cravings for bubbles, we decided to find alternatives to purchasing SodaStream CO2 cartridge refills (SodaStream seltzer makers use proprietary cartridges, which theoretically require paying them and only them for more gas when the bubbles run flat). We haven’t quite figured out a way around this, though according to the internet, it’s possible to buy cartridges from other companies that fit the Penguin. In the meantime, we haven’t used the device.
Also in the meantime, Scarlett Johansson‘s decision to serve as a spokesperson for the company — and to defend its business operations — has brought a lot of attention to the topics of homemade seltzer, celebrity endorsements, human rights violations and peace in the Middle East. I have to say, on a personal note, I find her stance surprising. Before this move, I have admired her progressive politics and outspoken support for reelecting the President, defending women’s health and rights in the U.S. and reducing poverty around the world.
For more background on this brouhaha, here are some handy links:
Zady, the company I told you about in this nepotistic post, is now live. Among the stories behind the brands featured on the site you will find an everydaytrash.com essay on my incredible grandmother who hated waste and who would be so proud of my sister and her friend Maxine for the business they launched today.
This week’s Moth podcast deals with life, death and trash.
World renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson has a blog and you should read it. In a recent post entitled “By the Numbers: Food Waste” he shares key stats on our wasteful nation as well as four great recipes for using up leftovers.
via Samuelsson’s Food for Thought blog section of his website
In addition to advocating freezing, composting, cooking with wine and saving bread for various recipes, Samuelsson imparts one recipe each for a delicious-sounding soup, salad, slaw and taco. I love this combination of recipe ideas as a mantra for anyone with a bit left over after a meal—especially tacos. I often make soups or salads out of surplus dinner party fare, but tacos just make leftovers sound more fun!
The whole post reminds me of my grandmother who, borrowing from the tradition of Samuelsson‘s home of Sweden, would occasionally declare a smorgasbord lunch. She would empty out the fridge and put out little bits of this and that, some served cold and some served hot, left over from the amazing array of gourmet offerings created in her farm kitchen each week.
The Aspen Institute posted today a new report on global food waste from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Horrifying findings indicate that 30–50% (or 1.2–2 billion tons) of all food produced worldwide never makes it to human stomachs and that in developed countries like the U.S. 30–50% of the food people buy to eat gets thrown in the trash.
Photo via the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
As Dan Glickman, author of the post, points out:
Thinking about the United States, where one in seven citizens is on food stamps and many more partially reliant on food banks (which regularly complain of shortages), even a fraction of that wasted food making its way to the dinner table would change the lives of millions of Americans.
Not coincidentally, food waste guru Jonathan Bloom reports today on Wasted Food:
Exciting News: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environmental Program and several other partners have joined forces to create Think. Eat. Save, a one-stop shop for your anti-food-waste needs.
Check out that site here and the full Global Food: Waste Not, Want Not report here.
Update: My favorite of the tips from the UN campaign is:
Buy Funny Fruit—many fruits and vegetables are thrown out because their size, shape, or color are not “right”. Buying these perfectly good funny fruit, at the farmer’s market or elsewhere, utilizes food that might otherwise go to waste.
everydaytrash 