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Cash For Your Trash
Price: $23.95
First Paperback Edition
Subtitle: Scrap Recycling in
America
Author:
Carl A. Zimring
Subject: Science,
History
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4694-0
Pages:
240 pages
Publication Date: October 2009
Praise for Cash for Your Trash:
"Zimring goes beyond the limited historical
literature on municipal solid wastes. Cash for Your Trash gives us a
sweeping account of industrial recycling long before residential
recycling became popular. It is a fine contribution to urban and
environmental history."-Martin V. Melosi, author of Garbage in the Cities
Cash
for Your Trash is an insightful study that deepens our
understanding of environmental history and contemporary environmental
issues from the perspectives of business, social, and urban
history."-Joel A. Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University
Description:
Over the past two
decades, concern about the environment has brought with it a tremendous
increase in recycling in the United States and around the world. For
many, it has become not only a civic, but also a moral obligation. Long
before our growing levels of waste became an environmental concern,
however, recycling was a part of everyday life for many Americans, and
for a variety of reasons. From rural peddlers who traded kitchen goods
for scrap metal to urban children who gathered rags in exchange for
coal, individuals have been finding ways to reuse discarded materials
for hundreds of years.
In Cash
for Your Trash, Carl A. Zimring provides a fascinating history
of scrap recycling, from colonial times to the present. Moving beyond
the environmental developments that have shaped modern recycling
enterprises, Zimring offers a unique cultural and economic portrait of
the private businesses that made large-scale recycling possible.
Because it was particularly common for immigrants to own or operate a
scrap business in the nineteenth century, the history of the industry
reveals much about ethnic relationships and inequalities in American
cities. Readers are introduced to the scrapworkers, brokers, and
entrepreneurs who, like the materials they handled, were often
marginalized.
Integrating findings from archival,
industrial, and demographic records, Cash
for Your Trash demonstrates
that over the years recycling has served purposes far beyond
environmental protection. Its history and evolution reveals notions of
Americanism, the immigrant experience, and the development of small
business in this country.
About the Author:
Carl A. Zimring is
a visiting assistant professor of history at Oberlin College. He
received his Ph.D. in 2002 from Carnegie Mellon University.
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Price: $23.95
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