Roughly every five years since 1992, the United States has experienced major urban destruction, both natural and man-made. Even before the shock has passed, dealing with trash and rubble is a critical part of post-disaster response. How do cities clean up?

Tornadoes, Twin Towers, and Hurricanes: 20 Years of Urban Disaster Clean-up

... Read more about Audio: Tornadoes, Twin Towers, and Hurricanes: 20 Years of Urban Disaster Clean-up

The golden age of mass disposal is now being supplanted by the age of mass recycling. Managing waste production has become an economic and ecologic imperative.

Waste Ecologies: The Landscape of Energy Cycling, Material Movements, and Resource Exchanges

... Read more about Audio: Waste Ecologies: The Landscape of Energy Cycling, Material Movements, and Resource Exchanges

Harvard generates as much trash as a small city, with a wide spectrum of refuse from residences, dining facilities, offices, clinics, and research laboratories. How does the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university recycle and reduce waste?

Stuff by the Yard: Campus Materials Management

... Read more about Audio: Stuff by the Yard: Campus Materials Management

The majority of urban trash is plastic or biodegradable. What is the best way to manage these materials? Businesses and environmentalists are battling it out right now.

Products, Plastics, Putrefaction, and Power

... Read more about Audio: Products, Plastics, Putrefaction, and Power

Garbage is rich with contradictions. It is both intimate and global, ubiquitous and invisible. We generate trash in vast quantities but few of us know where it goes, or how it gets there, or what happens to it next.

Garbage: Learning to Unsee 

... Read more about Audio: Garbage: Learning to Unsee

Every human culture leaves some broken pottery and more, which fill the trash dumps that archaeologists study. But the trash of today is a product of industrialization.

Rags, Bones, and Plastic Bags: Trash in Industrial America

... Read more about Audio: Rags, Bones, and Plastic Bags: Trash in Industrial America