Robin Nagle is a New York University anthrolopogist and the author of the about-to-be-published We All Wear Green: Loading Out with Sanitation Workers in New York. She just spent a week of on-the-job training with the garbage with the new crop of New York City garbage men and wrote about it in MSN Slate Magazine.
I know "garbage man" is not the most policitcally correct term for the role, but she used it in a relatively self-deprecating manner, so I figure it's acceptable here as well. Alternatives like garbage person, refuse management specialist, materials lifecycle engineer, and pie hole leader don't seem to have the same ring to them.
The links to each entry in the five-part series are here:
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
It's a worthwhile read because garbage is one of those things we wish would simply go away. Like sewage and the other grimy bits of society's underbelly, we pretend we're above all of them until the very moment there's some kind of accident or disaster. Over the next few years, I firmly believe that garbage, recycling, and all related elements of same will become somewhat more prominent in our lives as the unsustainability of a consumer-driven lifestyle comes back to bite us in the collective keester.
I suspect we'll see more of Ms. Nagle in the process. Based on her imagery-filled observations of her first week on the job, that likely won't be such a bad thing.
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