On a daily basis the average urban household disposes an enormous amount of garbage that includes both organic as well as inorganic waste. In the market-driven economy today, the consumer is said to be the ‘King’ and all product innovations are essentially aimed at getting the consumer to buy and consume more. Not surprisingly, it has been found that consumption levels and patterns depend on the buying power of the consumer to a large extent. The consumer with more buying power has access to more products than the consumer with lesser buying power. It follows, therefore, that consumers with more buying power are those that litter the environment more than their counterparts who are not able to buy as much as they do.
Waste disposed by the average middle class household daily
In the United States, the vast majority of people belong to the different segments of the middle class and their daily trash generation levels are not likely to be strikingly different from each other unless they are at the extreme ends of the middle classes. Let’s take the case of a suburban middle class family and here’s a list of items that ended up in their household trash can on a particular week – 4 bread wrappers, 15 egg shells, 5 large pizza boxes with some leftover including polythene pillow packs of salt and spices in all of them, two dozen instant coffee pouches, 24 beer cans, 2 dozen banana peels, 8 cigarette cases, 5 chocolate wrappers and a 1 liter floor cleaner bottle.
From the list of items it is clear that this kind of waste is generated mainly by a working class family where nobody really has the time to cook anything in the kitchen during an average week day. They don’t seem to have any children in the family despite the chocolate wrappers; the absence of milk bottles, candy and fancy confectionery wrappers or diapers make it clear. By all accounts, they are middle class workers with normal eating habits. Older people generally avoid junk food like pizza or instant coffee; so, they don’t appear to be seniors either. It would be difficult to ascertain the religious belief or political affiliation of these people on the basis of the garbage they generated in this case.
Significance of garbage in archeology
It is true that historical garbage has had a significant impact on the progress of archeology and still does. A wide range of trashed objects from pins to pottery products and from bullets to brandy bottles among multitudes of others have contributed immeasurably to archeological studies and research. It does not end there as archeology has a very big impact on history in the form of empirical evidence which these trashed objects from antiquity, carry (Baguchinsky, Jill. FGCU.edu.) Carbon dating of any object reveals its approximate age and that is today considered to be the most acceptable evidence to substantiate any historical claim.
Humans have been creating and collecting an endless multitude of objects and articles of varied uses and values through the ages. Interestingly, it is these very objects that give us an idea of the kind of mind the makers of these objects possessed. For instance, the curved daggers of the Middle East and their straight counterparts from Europe have surely been studied in detail by experts trying to get a peek into the mind of the medieval Arabs and Europeans. Similarly, there are scores of other objects that point toward the cultural characteristics of communities on the fringe of mainstream society or those that are forgotten.
Waste disposed by the average middle class household daily
In the United States, the vast majority of people belong to the different segments of the middle class and their daily trash generation levels are not likely to be strikingly different from each other unless they are at the extreme ends of the middle classes. Let’s take the case of a suburban middle class family and here’s a list of items that ended up in their household trash can on a particular week – 4 bread wrappers, 15 egg shells, 5 large pizza boxes with some leftover including polythene pillow packs of salt and spices in all of them, two dozen instant coffee pouches, 24 beer cans, 2 dozen banana peels, 8 cigarette cases, 5 chocolate wrappers and a 1 liter floor cleaner bottle.
From the list of items it is clear that this kind of waste is generated mainly by a working class family where nobody really has the time to cook anything in the kitchen during an average week day. They don’t seem to have any children in the family despite the chocolate wrappers; the absence of milk bottles, candy and fancy confectionery wrappers or diapers make it clear. By all accounts, they are middle class workers with normal eating habits. Older people generally avoid junk food like pizza or instant coffee; so, they don’t appear to be seniors either. It would be difficult to ascertain the religious belief or political affiliation of these people on the basis of the garbage they generated in this case.
Significance of garbage in archeology
It is true that historical garbage has had a significant impact on the progress of archeology and still does. A wide range of trashed objects from pins to pottery products and from bullets to brandy bottles among multitudes of others have contributed immeasurably to archeological studies and research. It does not end there as archeology has a very big impact on history in the form of empirical evidence which these trashed objects from antiquity, carry (Baguchinsky, Jill. FGCU.edu.) Carbon dating of any object reveals its approximate age and that is today considered to be the most acceptable evidence to substantiate any historical claim.
Humans have been creating and collecting an endless multitude of objects and articles of varied uses and values through the ages. Interestingly, it is these very objects that give us an idea of the kind of mind the makers of these objects possessed. For instance, the curved daggers of the Middle East and their straight counterparts from Europe have surely been studied in detail by experts trying to get a peek into the mind of the medieval Arabs and Europeans. Similarly, there are scores of other objects that point toward the cultural characteristics of communities on the fringe of mainstream society or those that are forgotten.
References
Baguchinsky, Jill. “Adventures in Garbology:
What Trash Can Tell Us.” FGCU.edu.
<http://itech.fgcu.edu/&/issues/vol2/issue2/garbology.htm> 
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