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28 Waste Management Practices: Municipal, Hazardous, and Industrial
connection between bacteria and viruses and the incidence of specific diseases. Public health offi-
cials eventually linked sanitation practices, including improper waste disposal to the incidence of dis-
ease and other health complaints. Thus was born the “Great Sanitary Awakening”. The understanding
of the pathology of infectious disease may very well have been the incentive behind modern sanita-
tion practices such as wastewater treatment and sanitary landfilling (Bilitewski et al., 1997).
By the mid-1830s, London became more strict about its enforcement policies regarding waste
disposal. The Metropolitan Police Act of 1839 was enacted, which penalized those who “cut tim-
ber or stone; threw or lay coal, stone slates, lime, bricks, timber, iron or other materials; or threw or
laid any dirt, litter or ashes, or any carrion, fish, offal or rubbish” into any thoroughfare (Wilson,
1977). London’s Public Health Act of 1875 mandated the removal of refuse by the Sanitary
Authority on appointed days. All tenants were required to place their wastes into a mobile recepta-
cle (this was, incidentally, the first legal recognition of the trash container). The Public Health Act
of 1891 directed the Sanitary Authority to “employ or contract with a sufficient number of scav-
engers to ensure the sweeping and the cleansing of the several streets within their district and the
collection and removal of street and house refuse.” Until 1965, the disposal of Greater London’s
refuse was handled by about 90 local authorities (Wilson, 1977).

2.6 UNITED STATES

As early as 1657 the residents of New Amsterdam (later New York City) prohibited the throwing of
garbage into streets; furthermore, keeping streets clean was the responsibility of the individual
homeowner (Gerlat, 1999). Garbage was piled high near elegant homes and, reminiscent of Ancient
Rome, hogs, geese, dogs, and vultures rummaged for food within the heaps. In 1834, Charleston,
West Virginia, enacted a law protecting garbage-eating vultures from hunters (Vesilind et al., 2002).
In early American cities, the collection of MSW was rare. Benjamin Franklin is considered to
be one of the first to organize a crude form of sanitation in any of the Colonial cities. In 1792,
Franklin hired servants to remove waste from the streets of Philadelphia (Alexander, 1993), which
had already expanded to a population of 60,000. According to a plan developed by Franklin, slaves
carried loads of wastes on their heads and waded into the Delaware River for waste disposal down-
stream from the city (Kelly, 1973). In 1795, the Corporation of Georgetown adopted the first ordi-
nance on record in America concerning waste management. The regulations forbade long-term
storage of wastes on private property or dumping in the street (APWA, 1976; Wilson, 1977). The
ordinance did not, however, provide details on collection or removal of waste. In 1800, Georgetown
and Washington, DC, contracted with “carriers” to clean streets and alleys periodically.
Urban solid waste problems caused by rapid industrialization and overcrowding were acute in
the northeastern United States, and were probably among the worst worldwide at that time. A flood
of immigrants from Europe and Asia exacerbated the on-going population migrations from the
countryside to the city (Alexander, 1993). New York slums were, at that time, the most densely pop-
ulated acreage in the world, worse than even those in Bombay (Melosi, 1981). Sidewalks were piled
high with garbage, and roadways were crowded with carts, horses, and people (Figure 2.3).
According to Zinn (1995), the cities:

were death traps of typhus, tuberculosis, hunger, and fire. In New York, 100,000 people lived in the cel-
lars of the slums … the garbage, lying 2 feet deep in the streets, was alive with rats.

As in the colonial period, pigs were allowed to run free because they scavenged some of the garbage
(Alexander, 1993).
Other parts of the country were not without problems of poor sanitation and inadequate waste
management. Zinn (1995) noted conditions of urban populations in the south after the Civil War:

And the slums of the southern cities were among the worst, poor whites living like the blacks, on unpaved
dirt streets “choked up with garbage, filth and mud”, according to a report of one state board of health.