Book Discussion - "Waste and Want"

Since it was my suggestion, I guess it's my responsibility to get things going.

I like the discipline of reading non-fiction along with other people; and the stimulus of varying points of view.

We will be reading and discussing Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, by Susan Strasser. The publication date is 1999.

If you'd like to get a copy of the book and jump in, please feel welcome. Or, if you'd rather just check in now and again, do that.

I found this book in the bibliography of Jeff Ferrell's book Empire of Scrounge. I am a long-time embarrasser of my offspring by stopping by other people’s trash piles and helping myself to cast-off treasures.
My children compare me to the Collyer brothers of New York. (who died with over 25,000 books amassed)

Susan Strasser is a professor of history, and seems to specialize in cultural history. She has also written Never Done, about housework; and Satisfaction Guaranteed, about advertising.

I like books that make me take a second look at the way things are done here and now. Science fiction does that, and so does this type of history book.

Strasser starts with an Intro - "Toward a History of Trashmaking." She indicates that until industrialization, waste in one part of the economic system typically represented a resource to another part, likening to a closed ecology. All parts got used.

Ok, I've started.
Was I meant to? Is there an official start date? What are the rules? I'm new to this as you can tell.

Hi Megan,

We'll make up rules as we go along. Nah!!!

Just comment on what you're reading. We'll try to keep some order, by working through the book chapter by chapter, but others may come in at a later date and add to the fun.

I'm trying to think of examples of production that fit or don't fit with the closed ecology model. I know there was enormous waste and ecological damage in industries.
For instance, mother of pearl buttons. The industry gutted the mussel beds of certain rivers (The Ohio being one of them), leaving mountains of rotting meat and discarded shell.

How fast are we reading chapters, roughly? One per week, less, more? Would be helpful so we can keep pace with each other.

Hi karspeak.

Wow! Your library is small, but fascinating. Glad you are joining us.

I think a chapter a week will probably work about right.

Actually, I've decided to use my LT library as a list of favorite books, rather than a list of all the books I've read. Instead, I use group threads to track my reading--this year on the 1010 Challenge, and the past 2 years on the 50 Book Challenge.

Great, I will get started ASAP on the book, looking forward to it!

Finished chapter one and found it fairly interesting from a historical perspective. And it does help frame how crazy our modern consumerism is, since it is not a closed cycle. Don't know why, but the whole time I was reading the chapter I couldn't stop thinking that movies that are set in the 1700s or 1800s never, ever depict people wearing patched clothing, which is completely unrealistic, as this book points out.

I totally agree with you karspeak- Chapter one is a good summary.
I think it must be because I know the author is a scholar, but the first chapter feels like a stand alone essay; maybe it held so much potential, it was expanded into a book. I hope it is as good as I get further in.

Yes, I am curious to see how she expands upon it, as well! It seems like she could go in a variety of different directions from this starting point.

Chapter 2
Found it similar to chapter one, except a lot of expansion on the rags-to-paper topic, which was interesting. So, again, some interesting historical details for me such as the role of peddlers and the recycling of bones, etc. It was also interesting to see the marked change at the end of the 19th century from household recycling of waste to disposable products. On to the 20th century...

Strasser's tone is academic but still approachable. It is not as reader-friendly as some other nonfic writers, however, which is fine with me but would put off some lay readers.

Oh wait!
I haven't caught up yet - got very involved with life beyond LT for a short while.
Can we go back to Chapter 1?
I'm re-reading the first section on food, and I want to incorporate some of the old recommendations into my own kitchen routine - like mincing left-overs after each meal so as to be ready to make cunning creations.

I'm a passionate re-user, but I had never been exposed to some of these ideas, just like the householders in the last century.

Also, going to look for the poke-fun title The Family Save-All (Touchstones pulling up weird stuff) that gives recipes like pea-shell pottage and stewed artichoke stems.

Later today, I'd like to comment about the concept of "bricoleur." I love it!

Wikipedia lists MacGyver as "the paragon of bricolage."

There is so much in Strasser's book that I relate to personally, and the rest of it makes me smile.

The second part of Chapter 1 deals with fabric re-use. Repairs and re-making garments, and then incorporating old fabrics into quilts and rag-rugs.

I don't have the patience for the last two activities, but I collect examples as I find them.
My daughter takes random found pieces and transforms them into the cutest dresses for the grand-daughters. I've got a long-held stash of items for her up in my attic.

I thought Strasser's comment about quilts being a relatively new phenomenon was very interesting; I had never heard that before. I did not find much personally in chapter one to apply to reducing my household waste, although I could always make a point of not wasting food that I have bought and then discover a week later at the back of the fridge! Your (and the author's) talk of food mincing, 2wonderY, reminds me of the book Little Heathens, which is a memoir of a childhood during the Great Depression. The author mentioned that any woman caught not wiping out an egg (to get out the extra yolk when breaking open eggs for cooking/baking) would be looked down upon by the other women because she was wasteful!

I had been planning to read this, but an author who thinks quilting is new would probably irritate me beyond belief. Is that really an accurate summation?

> 13 Sounds like Little Heathens would explain my parents.

Hi, jennieg, I'm quoting from the pertinent paragraph below, so you can judge for yourself. It's part of a larger section on quilting, BTW.

From p. 54
Contrary to common belief, quilts were rare in colonial America. Quilt historians agree that quilting represents not scarcity but the widespread availability of materials: few quilts were made of homespun, and large numbers of women began to quilt only when manufactured fabric became broadly accessible. Nor were the earliest quilts composed of patchwork--small pieces of fabric sewn together into quilt tops; the tops consisted either of one piece of white fabric or of colored fabrics appliqued onto a single large piece. Since handmade fabric was so valuable, colonists favored "simple square-cut (clothing) patterns that used an entire width of cloth selvage to selvage, leaving no scraps to be incorporated into other projects." Only with factory-produced cloth could they afford the diverse fabrics required for patchwork.

The author has 4 references for this paragraph, including The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort. Hope this helps sway you one way or the other! Her research seems exhaustive. She discussed in preceding paragraphs how common quilting was in the 1800s, along with other textile crafts such as hooked rugs, rag rugs, and upholstery.

Wow- wasteful for not wiping out an egg! (message 14) Reminds me a lot of my grandmother who as a single mother of a toddler (my dad) was a displaced refugee during WWII. She was horrified at any waste of any food, a trait I'm lucky enough to have inherited from her!

It is a great thing to read about such well managed kitchens. I often wonder what edibles I could be making with my orange peel, or onion skins, as I put them on the compost.

Thank you, karspeak. I suppose the term 'new' is relative.

Right, I didn't know there was such a big difference in available items between colonial times and the 1800s.

Ireadthereforiam, at least you're composting! I have a teeny backyard and tried it but was overwhelmed by cockroaches (who thrive on dead leaves etc., here in Savannah, GA, not necessarily food). I miss the municipal composting we had in Tacoma, WA.

The West Coast seems to be much further along with the idea of municipal planning for Zero Waste. San Francisco's system is sophisticated, and seems to be working. They plan to be Zero Waste in just a couple of years.

That's one of the reasons I think Strasser's book is important. All of us need to be thinking and re-thinking our patterns of use.

Anyone else done with Chapter 2?

Yes Karspeak (nearly!). Still getting the feeling that the issues discussed are built around whatever historical information was available. So I feel like I might be missing out on some stuff .....but what is there is (a) factual, obviously, and (b) really interesting.

So I cant complain.

I've been ssiicckk. Blah!
Doped up on allergy meds, haven't been able to read with my eyes crossed.
I'm glad I'm not too far behind.

Yep, Ireadthereforiam, I had the exact same thoughts!

Hope you feel better soon, 2wonderY. My husband only got relief from his allergies this spring when he went to North Dakota for 2 weeks, and there was still snow on the ground!

I have to say- my Waste and Want reading is being impeded by a side-obsession with Alain DeBotton at the moment. Did not like Consolations of Philosophy but LOVED The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (read in 4 days) and am loving Essays in Love (likely to be read in 4 days).

In keeping with my "I always judge a book by its cover" philosophy, the covers are, I think, works of art. I'd like to buy them all and have them cover-forward on a shelf!

Will get on with the book at hand though....soon.

I've been toying with reading Pleasures...Work. Some reviewers thought the book lost steam or was overly wordy, I take it you didn't feel that way?

No- not at all. I found every word useful, and the chapters steamy to the end (if you know what I mean).

It's in the way that he seems to encapsulate those nebulous thoughts that knock around in your brain, and put them succinctly into a single sentence. It amazed me every time- I wish I could write like that!

Alright, onto my list it goes!

Finished Waste and Want tonight. I'll chime in on future discussions.

>28 karspeak:, good to hear you've got there. (this read is my second attempt and this group is meant to be spurring me on!)

I do my reading nowhere near a computer and so when I have those wow moments that I should be discussing....I just read through it and then forget how to articulate it later on- maybe I need to take a pencil to the margins and flick back though!

I was at my mums today (serial thrift shopper) and she had bought a shirt made entirely from flour bags! I think it was South or Central American as the brand was "El Superior".

I, as someone who loves to not waste things, loved in the book the old flour sacks coming printed in floral designs specifically for the benefit of mothers making dresses for their girls. It just makes sense! I can certainly see that there would have been a stigma in that then, (and now) but love the foresight of the manufacturers who did that.

When I was growing up, some toast spreads came in glass "jars" that could be used after as glasses to drink from, and I haven't seen that sort of thing since. It makes the conspiracy theorist in me wonder if they are in cahoots with the dinnerware lot. That doesn't seem probable though.

Yep, I remember those glasses, too!
I had a bad cold while I was reading the chapter about how slow people were to start using Kleenex or paper napkins instead of cloth. I already use cloth napkins at home, but I've been trying to take a cloth napkin to use at work, and I have been trying to use cloth handkerchiefs on occasion, too (when I'm at home). It's a hard habit to change, though!

There are certainly a lot of pieces now being sold in antiques stores being called flour sacks. We saw a bunch yesterday. Odd that they should be surfacing now, and in pristine condition. Googled the term and found a good page:

http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/feedsacks.htm

Lovely patterns.

Chapter 3

I find it interesting that Strasser states that when municipal collection of trash was becoming more common, households were required to seperate materials so that towns could profit from the recyclables.
What comes around, goes around.
Nothing new under the sun.

My own town on the Ohio River had a pig farm at the turn of the century, which could be subscribed to. Edible garbage was fed to the pigs, and subscribers got a portion of the pork at the end of the season.

>34 2wonderY:...joint projects like the pig farm are do-able I reckon, but no one wants to take responsibility for them as they cant figure out if someone is going to get more out of it than they are. Ie: a private farm, council collection of rubbish scraps, delivery people, householders supplying scrap food etc.

chapter 5- it is interesting how it all comes down to 4 materials: scrap metal, rubber, paper and fats. And look what they could do when everyone did their bit!

It seems like we are taught to consume consume consume and are only guided in the ways of thrift when the economy is half dead through war. It all comes down to economics after all...

But I was shocked that during hard times, such as the Depression and WWII, people didn't revert MORE to earlier patterns of thrift. It's very hard to break new habits, apparently, especially when they make life easier.

I wasn't clear from the book, what were the fats being re-used for (on a large scale, not in people's kitchens)? Just soap?

According to the poster- "save waste fats for explosives" they were used in munitions manufacture. Cant see that happening now can you?

In the 1930's depression there was talk (as with now) of spending your way out of recession (and to therefore continue to consume at the expense of the environment ultimately- but that's a whole new topic!).

I am stiiiiill plodding along with this book- is anyone still with me?

Nearing the end of chapter 6....the discussion is on scrap drives and the recruitment of children, through schools, to collect. It is interesting that primary (elementary) schools performed better than High Schools in volume of collection, and I was pleased to read what I had thought to be true, that younger "children were receptive and susceptible to propaganda". Given that the fats drive was thought by some to have little importance in the "war effort" other than by mobilising the home front. (Why are wars always used by leaders to improve their approval rating!?)

Im feeling a bit bogged down by the war effort thread in this book, onwards I go!

Although the book starts strong, I've had the same bogged down feeling as you, Megan. I wonder why I can't get further. The topic certainly interests me...

This is my 2nd go with trying to finish the book. I will dig it from beneath the accumulations and begin again.
Still with you.

Yeah, I agree with both of you. The review I wrote for my 1010 Challenge Group after finishing it is below. I don't think this book is quite what any of us had hoped.

This book is a detailed history of America's relationship with wastefulness. It begins with zero waste from the 1600s to the 1800s, as people patched clothes instead of throwing them out, sold rags and bones to peddlers who came to the door (rags were used to make paper back then), gave food scraps to animals or sold them to swill kids who came to the door, etc. At the end of the 1900s, industrialization led to a rapid rise in non-recycled waste, and the trend continues to the present, obviously.

This was not a riveting book, and there were no "aha!" moments, even for someone quite interested in environmental issues. The historical details were the main focus of the book, and I found them mildly interesting. But since consumerism is such a major issue for the U.S., I am glad I read this book to learn a little more about the history of this issue. But Waste and Want definitely is NOT a page-turner.

>40 karspeak:, thanks for posting that! I feel vilified. I'm very nearly finished and am finding that the first and last chapters seem to be really interesting and the rest, as you said, "historical details".

This is my second attempt to read it too, I gave up at nearly half way about 4 years ago, so am pleased that I think I'm going to make it this time thanks to the group!

>40 karspeak: PS that book Pickled, Potted and Canned that you've added to your collection looks interesting too, are you reading it now or have you already? What's it like?

Pickled, Potted, and Canned was excellent, I would definitely recommend it. It was very readable and filled in a lot of food history that I didn't know about. One of my top 5 books of last year. When my sister recommended it to me, I was skeptical, but it really was good!

Oh, I forgot to mention, I finished the book! Finally! Glad to have read it all at last. Maybe the next non-fiction group read will go faster! It definitely will if I have to get the book from the library! Thanks though team, it was fun talking about it.

Congrats on finishing it, it did take a bit of work to get through it!