Garbology: analyzing artifacts in a family's trash

Garbology

Analyzing Artifacts

Human beings are curious creatures. We experience interactions, form relationships, maintain habitats, and we always leave traces of things we need and like. One of the things that best mirrors a human's life is found in his or her waste, for instance, and just as a criminal investigator forages through a crime scene to develop hypotheses about a criminal's behavior, so can an individual forage through trash and find out a multitude of artifacts that can pinpoint an individual's habits quite specifically.

Yet garbage is not only important in its ability to say so much about a person and his or her life, but is also important because of the fact that garbage, if not properly sorted and categorized, and actually harm the environment. There are many landfills around the country, for instance, that have a great problem with environmental pollution, which mainly stems from unfiltered garbage.

Methodology

The following analysis aims to describe, categorize, and analyze various artifacts found in a family's trash. This is, then, a smaller scope of the above-presented problem, but it can be a start. The methodology for this study was to simply choose a trash can and inspect it in a sanitary way, regardless of the content believed to be in this can. The can is to be emptied completely, and the garbage placed in paper and plastic bags. One of the first things learned through this experiment was the importance of carefully categorizing artifacts, so as to organize them in a logical manner in order to make sense of the subsequent mess created. The system developed for this exercise was based on five categories. These included:

-Category 1: any type of food, whether human or otherwise (i.e. pet food);

-Category 2: types of packaging related to food and non-food items;

-Category 3: any paper products;

-Category 4: personal hygiene products for both sexes;

-Category 5: beauty products and other items not analyzed in Categories 1 through 5.

Categorization

The next section of this paper will describe some of the things found in each category through the table created below.

Category 1

Category 2

Category 3

Category 4

Category 5

Meats

Metal cans

Envelopes

Soaps and soap based agents (i.e. detergents)

Lotions and ointments

Canned and packaged foods

Cardboard/plastic packaging (such as for frozen foods)

Various sheets of paper (printed)

Razors

Cleaning products

Category 1

Category 2

Category 3

Category 4

Category 5

Vegetables/fruits

Various sized plastic containers

Toilet paper/paper towels

Feminine products

Wilted flowers

Pet foods

Glass

Newspapers

Make-up products

Threads and strings

Sauces

Rubber products

Magazines

Personal care containers (i.e. acne cream container)

Pet waste

Analysis

The examples given in the above table form only a quarter of the full picture of habits that set this family apart from all others. From the simple categorization of a few of the items found above, one can clearly see patterns in this particular family's waste. For instance, one knows that there are at least one man and one woman living in this house, as well as a pet (most likely a cat since the trash contained pet waste). Furthermore, the articles found above delineate certain habits in both the male and female of the household, as well as point to specifics such as how healthy their diet is. To further examined this the paper asks six questions, all answered below:

1. Who produces the trash?

Answer: from the analysis of this particular bin, it was concluded that at least one male and one female, as well as a cat produced this trash. However, due to little evidence, it was hard to conclude whether more than two persons produce this trash. The quantity of garbage was quite small, which further added to the assumption, but there was no truth found.

2. What behaviors produced the trash?

Answer: just as in any family, there are routine behaviors that produces certain types and amounts of garbage. In this particular instance, because of a variety in foodstuffs, especially in the fruits and vegetables found, as well as the various kinds of meat, cooking can be assumed to have been undertaken in a large amount. Furthermore, because of some rubber gloves found, as well as some cleaning product containers, one can assume that this family did a lot of cleaning as well. Lastly, it is important that newspapers and magazines, as well as printed documents were found, which prove that this family is quite well educated, given the variety of items found.

3. How many people produced the trash?

Answer: this question was undertaken above, and it was determined that at least two people produced this waste, and at most three people. Furthermore, it was determined that a cat also produced some of the waste.

4. How long did it take them to produce it?

Answer: the time frame of this particular question can be assumed based on the basic trash patterns and trash pick-up days. Thus, in seeing that a relatively low amount of trash accumulated from one pick up day to another, one can assume that a few people produced very little trash.

6. Are there indications of social class?

Answer: the few indications of social class were once again found in the foods and food containers utilized. For instance, many containers were labeled as organic, which is generally known to be a more expensive food. Also, magazines found were also seen as quite expensive, such as a few international magazines. Yet it was also quite disappointing that things that could be recycled, such as papers and plastics, were included with the trash, and were not sorted. Though these individuals belong to a high social class, they have little education as to how to care for the environment.

Conclusions

The experiment above found the processes to be both innovative and to show, as expected, a great deal of insight into a certain family, from the simple analysis of its garbage. This family was found to be quite a small family, quite well off, yet also to have quite specific interests. However, it was also found that this family was not concerned with the environment, as it did not recycle. Yet the experiment was quite successful, useful and interesting, and this methodology can tell us a lot about how human anthropology studies can be conducted, in the present, and how they can help us in learning about our own selves.