We have 8 billion people on this planet today, all of whom generate trash. Perhaps some more than others but collectively, trash is a huge problem today. The biggest culprit is plastic. Don't get me wrong, we do need some plastic for many applications but the throw away culture means a lot of plastic ends up in the environment.
 
So it is a great pleasure when I come across an artisan who can elevate what is an unwanted material into fashionable earrings and divert waste from the landfills. The transformation by ellybead, a US designer based in Ohio, is remarkable. Her recycled plastic earrings are beautifully coloured and the abstract shapes is on trend.









A Brief History of Trash and Recycling

Humans have always created trash AND recycled dating back to the stone age. Back then, there were few humans so they merely discarded and abandoned waste material from their food sources and tools wherever they were. Archaeologists would find piles of animal bones and unwanted tools in caves and other sites.

It takes a lot of effort to make knapped flints and so as these primitive tools got blunt, they were recycled into scraping rather than cutting or hunting tools. Bone needles could be sharpened. If the eye part broke, they simply made new holes until the shortened needles were no longer useable. 

Prehistoric tools and needles Picture Source

Shell middens can be found all over the world. These were little hills made up from discarded shellfish waste. Early humans who harvested from the sea, simply chucked the mollusc shells often right outside their homes. Some communities even lived on top of the middens.

Whaleback oyster shell midden, Maine
200BCE to 1000CE
By Photo by ©2007 Dustin M. Ramsey 

Problems started to mount when settlements grew. People would just dump human waste and garbage outside their houses onto the streets. People had to walk in the filth. If the householder was thoughtful, they might yell a warning before dumping! Needless to say, it was a huge health problem for centuries.

The Ancient Romans did solve the problem in their time by bringing fresh water to the city via aqueducts which was also used in the public toilets to flush away human waste. The communal use of sponges on sticks would not be appealing today! 

Roman latrines, Housestead Fort, Hadrian's Wall, UK
Image Credit: CC / Carole Raddato
Picture source

They also built huge sewage canals, the main one being the Cloaca Maxima in Rome which can still be seen today. 

Cloaca Maxima outfall, 2019
Picture source : Mbattista22

Ancient Romans also had to deal with vast quantities of the packaging material of the day - the ceramic amphora.


While Rome prospered, loads of goods like olive oil and other products were imported from all over their vast empire in these jars. The grain filled amphorae could be reused but not the ones used for oily stuff like garum, a popular fermented fish sauce. So the jars were broken up and the shards carefully piled up into one huge artificial hill.  An early landfill! It's called the Monte Testaccio today. 

Monte Testaccio, Rome
Picture source

Rivers were always convenient dumping sites for everything - human waste, garbage, industrial effluent and so on. People also depended on rivers for drinking water and washing!  

Human waste was also deposited in cesspits for someone - called a gong farmer or nightman - to dig out and transport away. They sold it to farmers for fertilizer. 


Once flush toilets became popular in the 19th century, the volume of waste now included vast quantities of water which was channeled to the rivers. The Great Stink was the pivotal event in London during the hot dry summer of 1868 when the stench from the River Thames was overpowering. 

So much so that Parliament finally agreed to upgrade the sewage system. They were previously reluctant spend sufficient money on this crucial infrastructure upgrade despite the numerous proposals by a brilliant engineer, Joseph Bazalgette.  He and his crew did so well that those many miles of sewers and pumping stations are still in use today. He was meticulous and thought of every detail. The beautiful, yet, highly functional Crossness pumping station was designed by Bazalgette and another engineer, Charles Driver.

Crossness Pumping station, Kent
Picture Source : Christine Matthews

Modern sewage systems now treat waste before releasing the water and materials back into the environment. However, people still flush down things they should not (out of sight, out of mind mentality).  Wet wipes, diapers, tampons, pads, condoms, you name it.
The only thing other than bodily waste to go down the toilet should be toilet paper. 

There is no such thing as flushable wet wipes - these should be banned everywhere. Mounds of wet wipes from the sewage system, mixed with mud, are literally reshaping the shoreline of River Thames in England.

Picture source

In 2024, a "fatberg" weighing 35 tonnes was removed from a blocked British sewer in Abbey Mills. It weighed the equivalent of 3 double decker buses! This huge mass of silt made up of wet wipes, tampons and condoms took 11 days for the crew of 20 to remove.

RECYCLING
There is a long, long history of people making and reusing materials worldwide well before there were modern recycling programs. Growing up in Malaysia, I remember enterprising people coming to my grandparents' house to collect glass bottles, empty cans and newspapers - a small sum of money was paid to my grandmother. These were resold to companies to remake new bottles, cans and cardboard. A pig farmer used to come daily for food scraps for her animals. 

In some parts of the world, the desperately poor still recycle whatever they can find from huge landfills. (see my post on the Children of Nica Hope). 

When newspapers came along in Europe in the 17th century, old clothing was especially useful as they were made into newsprint. But once the newsprint industry turned to wood pulp, rag collection became less lucrative. The rag and bone men were impoverished. They collected just about anything including bones from kitchens to be made into ornaments etc. The extracted grease was used for candles.

Rag and bone man, Paris 1899
Picture source : Eugène Atget 

Today we have an enormous waste problem in fast fashion. The rag trade and modern consumerism together are churning out clothing which is only worn for a brief time.

The worldwide use of plastics, made from the processing of fossil fuels, is even more of a concern.  Only 60% of plastic can be recycled and worse, only 10% of plastic are actually reused. The pollution problem is it takes plastic a very long time to decompose - perhaps up to a few hundred years if ever depending on conditions. Instead, plastic breaks down into tiny pieces. The waste fouls our environments and harms many creatures.

Microplastics have been found in the human body - in bodily fluids like saliva, blood, breast milk, sputum and in organs like the liver, brain, kidneys and even inside bones. Humans are now inhaling and ingesting more microplastics than ever and we are now seeing how do the microplastics in our bodies affect our health resulting in the elevated risk of cancer, respiratory illnesses and miscarriages from such plastic contamination in our bodies. According to the (British medical journal) Lancet Countdown on health and plastic, plastics cause death and disease to US$1.5 trillion annually of health related damages.

We definitely could lessen our use of plastic. While we do need it, there is way too much waste plastic now.  We do need a world wide plan where nations can agree on how to track and how to reduce plastics.

Beach plastic pollution
Picture Source

The above is just a little potted history of trash and recycling. For more fascinating details, watch this great documentary : 
Garbage Through the Ages | A History of Human Waste



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Original Post by THE BEADING GEM