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102 Tons
Throughout Garbology, author Edward Humes describes the U.S.’s relationship with trash as an addiction. While this relationship doesn’t fit the medical definition of addiction, metaphorically, the comparison helps emphasize how deeply entrenched certain practices are in the U.S. Many addiction treatment models center around the idea that addicts are in a state of denial and that an addict’s first step to getting help is admitting that they need help. This mirrors Humes’s view of the U.S., which he believes has become so influenced by waste and consumerism that many Americans are essentially in a state of denial about the 102 tons of garbage that they produce over the course of a lifetime. Addiction recovery programs also put an emphasis on personal responsibility, and throughout Garbology, Humes too emphasizes the ability of individuals to change the way that they and their communities think about trash—particularly at the end of the book, when Humes encourages readers to get involved and send him their own sustainability suggestions. Ultimately, addiction often causes people to act against their own best interests, and this is why it is a useful metaphor for Humes, who sees the U.S.’s current waste management practices as short-sighted and self-destructive.
Addiction Quotes in Garbology
The Garbology quotes below all refer to the symbol of Addiction. 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:
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Introduction
Quotes
What no one considered back then (and few acknowledge now) is waste’s oddest, most powerful quality: We’re addicted to it.
It turns out our contemporary economy, not to mention the current incarnation of the American Dream, is inextricably linked to an endless, accelerating accumulation of trash.
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Epilogue
Quotes
When this book was conceived, I intended to write about our 64-ton lifetime trash legacy, not the 102 tons it turns out to be. This original, smaller calculation was based on the widely accepted and official data point produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which asserts that the average American produced 4.5 pounds of trash a day. When I discovered midway through this project that these numbers were wrong, that Americans were actually churning out an average of 7.1 pounds a day and sending twice as much trash to the landfill as we were being led to believe, it did more than change the central metaphor of a book about garbage.
It meant our trash problem—our trash addiction—already the biggest on the planet, is way, way worse than we’ve been told.
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Get the entire Garbology LitChart as a printable PDF.
Addiction Symbol Timeline in Garbology
The timeline below shows where the symbol Addiction appears in Garbology. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Introduction
...numbers are so high and yet so little-known that it’s as if trash is an addiction in the U.S.
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Chapter 10
...a symbol for unnecessary waste as a whole. He believed that the cure for trash addiction has to start somewhere, and it might as well begin with the most visible sign:...
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Epilogue
...legacy, not 102 tons. Humes discovered midway through the writing process that the U.S.’s trash addiction was actually larger than he realized. Rather than taking these large numbers as a symbol...
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