Over a week I recorded all of my garbage disposal and interrogated my family on what they threw out in my absence to avoid digging through again. I realized what kind of habits my family and I have in our disposal and also our purchasing habits so when I went to analyze another person’s, I made many connections on what a person could find out just by digging through trash. And when I started making connections to who that classmate could be, I realized how creepy Garbology work can appear to be. The things found in trash can be commonly found in relation to each other such as vegetables and fruit be associated with perhaps a paper or plastic bag from QFC. It takes no genius to come to that conclusion but when you consider the lack of marks or the unreliability of stamps can be, it takes a bit of wet work. But for this lab, it was pretty easy simply because of familiarity to those objects.

Found this old relic in my trash bin! Incredible what you find in there.

The person whose garbage I had is definitely a child of the West Coast or at least internally became one deeply. The fact that the refuse is separated by trash and recycling in such a detailed way shows this person is a Seattleite. It’s reflective of this city’s general concern with environment and probably its eating habits as well. The person was very dissimilar to me but at the same very similar. It just goes to show how much we can learn about each other through archaeology even in very recent times.

And here’s my dog

it’s interesting how many households keep these artifacts whose only function appears to be leaving garbage around the house. Perhaps a culture of cleanup?