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A Brief History of Waste Management 31
Lower Manhattan Bay, currents and tides dispersed little of the waste into ocean waters; much of it
washed up on the beaches of Long Island and New Jersey (Figure 2.6) (Bettmann, 1974; Alexander,
1993). Another waste disposal practice involved a public facility called a “dispose,” which was used
to convert animal carcasses, meat by-products, and other waste food products into raw materials for
industrial products ranging from soap to explosives. These facilities disappeared with the decline in
the supply of raw materials and an increase in local ordinances regulating the foul-smelling runoff
they generated (Melosi, 1981).
In the late 1800s, enterprising individuals scoured the streets and trash piles searching for mate-
rial of value, essentially carrying out a simple form of recycling (Figure 2.7). Scavengers, also
known as “rag pickers,” removed much unwanted material in cities. For example, in the city of
3
Chicago, rag pickers collected over 2000 yd daily (Gerlat, 1999). Partly because of such efforts and
partly because of the simpler lifestyles of the period, in 1916, the municipal collection crews col-
lected only about 0.23 kg (0.5 lb) of refuse per capita per day, compared with about ten times that
which is collected today (Vesilind et al., 2002).

FIGURE 2.6 Coney Island beach pollution from disposal off the New York City coast.