Marketing a Nuisance: Waste trading in New York City, 1880-1990

• In Event: Markets & the Environment II: Markets in the Land

Abstract

Scholars have examined the excessive waste produced by capitalist and consumer societies, often highlighting corporate influence over municipal recycling systems or hazardous waste dumping by wealthy cities and nations. These studies tend to treat refuse as a by-product of capitalist markets rather than a commodity in its own right. The history of waste-trading in New York City demonstrates, rather, that refuse played a vital part in the capitalist marketplace and the local urban economy. Well into the twentieth century, entrepreneurs and municipal officials strived to turn waste into a marketable good. Swine farmers in Secaucus, New Jersey, capitalized on New York City’s copious waste production by using food waste from its hotels and restaurants to feed their swine through the 1950s. Waste landscapes also created valuable urban property including parks and recreational space in the 1930s and 1940s. However, growing concern about waste as a sanitary problem over the course of the twentieth century complicated the economic value and function of waste as a commodity leading to the marginalization of the waste trade and those who did this “dirty work.” Paradoxically, when New York State officials created municipal recycling systems in the 1990s, they struggled to recover secondary materials markets in light of increased environmental regulation and cleanliness standards.

Author

• Tina Peabody, University at Albany, State University of New York