Previous
Bill Rathje
Mike Speiser was a worker at the Puente Hills landfill, which was located outside of Los Angeles. Puente Hills was one of the biggest, most technologically advanced landfills in the world, even offering tours to the public, earning itself a reputation as the Disneyland of waste management. Speiser was skilled at this work and enjoyed it, operating industrial-grade machinery to help manage mountains of trash. Speiser represents how much work goes into managing the U.S.’s waste and how, while this work is hidden from many people, it becomes very visible when you’re on the front lines.
Mike Speiser (Big Mike) Quotes in Garbology
The Garbology quotes below are all either spoken by Mike Speiser (Big Mike) or refer to Mike Speiser (Big Mike) . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“There is no other place like it, and no other job like it, either,” Big Mike says, gazing fondly at his dusty, noisy workplace. This observation is accompanied by a sigh of satisfaction tinged with regret, because soon, Big Mike knows, it will end. Soon the mountain will be finished, though not gone, of course—a landfill is never gone. It’s the question of what’s next that has not yet been resolved, that L.A. and the rest of the country are trying to puzzle out, and that will have lasting consequences no matter how it’s answered: Is it time to dump the dump as the centerpiece of waste? Or time to hedge our bets once again and find even bigger dumps to take their place?
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Garbology LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mike Speiser (Big Mike) Quotes in Garbology
The Garbology quotes below are all either spoken by Mike Speiser (Big Mike) or refer to Mike Speiser (Big Mike) . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“There is no other place like it, and no other job like it, either,” Big Mike says, gazing fondly at his dusty, noisy workplace. This observation is accompanied by a sigh of satisfaction tinged with regret, because soon, Big Mike knows, it will end. Soon the mountain will be finished, though not gone, of course—a landfill is never gone. It’s the question of what’s next that has not yet been resolved, that L.A. and the rest of the country are trying to puzzle out, and that will have lasting consequences no matter how it’s answered: Is it time to dump the dump as the centerpiece of waste? Or time to hedge our bets once again and find even bigger dumps to take their place?
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
