The White House’s push to boost domestic production of raw materials has turned attention to America’s waste stream.

“Here we have a man whose job it is to gather the day’s refuse in the capital,” wrote Charles Baudelaire, invoking the ragpicker, a new type on the streets of his native nineteenth-century Paris.

There's no getting around it: Earth has a trash problem. Particularly in the West: we throw away more than two billion – with a “b” – tonnes of the stuff every year, and only a tiny proportion of it ...

Trash piles up on Wyalusing Avenue near Cathedral Cemetery in West Philadelphia as the municipal workers strike continues, July 7, 2025. (Emma Lee/WHYY) It’s day seven of the Philadelphia blue-collar ...

GETTING THAT ANSWER. IT’S REALLY QUITE SIMPLE. YOUR TRASH IS PICKED UP BY THE CITY OR A COLLECTOR OF YOUR CHOICE, AND THEN HAULED OFF TO THE LOCAL LANDFILL. BUT LET’S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PROCESS ...

It’s 1:31 on a Monday afternoon, and our home’s plastic curbside garbage container—just one of the 8,000 or so residential containers picked up every garbage day in Olmsted County—is mechanically ...