November 15 marks the 10th annual “America Recycles Day,” in which Americans are encouraged to recycle and to buy recycled products. But while the benefits of household recycling are clear, New York University Anthropologist Robin Nagle says, for the most part, it avoids the bigger contributors to the nation’s solid waste problem.
November 15 marks the 10th annual “America Recycles Day,” in which Americans are encouraged to recycle and to buy recycled products. But while the benefits of household recycling are clear, New York University Anthropologist Robin Nagle says, for the most part, it avoids the bigger contributors to the nation’s solid waste problem.
Nagle, who served as a uniformed sanitation worker while researching a book based on life in New York City’s Department of Sanitation, notes that only 2 percent of solid waste comes from households. If the United States is going to get serious about recycling, she contends, it needs to turn to other sources—Nagle notes that for every pound of solid waste that an American citizen creates, American industry, agriculture, and mining produce 70 pounds.
Nagle is director of NYU’s Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program. Her book, Picking Up, is out next year from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Reporters interested in speaking with Nagle about issues surrounding recycling should contact James Devitt, NYU’s Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6808 or james.devitt@nyu.edu.