Cash for Your Trash

Long before our growing levels of waste became an environmental concern, 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. Integrating findings from archival, industrial, and demographic records, and 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.

"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 "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: Refuse Reform and the Environment"

CARL A. ZIMRING is an assistant professor of social science at Roosevelt University.