In the 1800s, there were no blue recycling bins, no sorting, no recycling trucks rumbling down the alley. Recycling as we know it didn鈥檛 exist. But people were way better at it.
鈥淧eople recycled far more than we do now,鈥 says Susan Strasser, author of . If the elbows in a shirt wore out, you鈥檇 take the sleeves off, turn them inside out, and voila: new shirt. If a dress went out of style, you added new buttons or sent it back to the dressmaker to fashion a trendier frock. Eventually, the fabric would be turned into a quilt or a rag rug or just a rag.
鈥淏efore there was municipal solid waste disposal, stuff would pile up in your house if you didn鈥檛 reuse it,鈥 Strasser points out. 鈥淚n addition, people who made things had an understanding of the value of material goods that we don鈥檛 have at all. Literally, if everything you wore, sat on, or used in your house was something you made or your mother or uncle or the guy down the street made, you had a very different sense of value of material goods.鈥
Household manuals even featured discussions on how to repair glass, including using garlic as glue, she says.
The closest 19th-century equivalent to modern-day recycling? The ragman, Strasser says. The ragman went from house to house to buy old cloth for an international trade in rags to make into paper. Railroads largely put an end to the door-to-door rag collecting.
When garbage pickup started in the late 19th century, many cities separated reusable trash from garbage designated for a landfill. Just like today, workers sorted via conveyor belts as early as 1905. The cities sold the reusable trash to industries. And many individuals saved their organics to feed to animals.
But by the 1920s, source separation wasn鈥檛 happening. By then, not much was being recycled apart from metal at scrapyards.
鈥淏ut really there was a relatively short period of time that people didn鈥檛 recycle,鈥 Strasser says.
Recycling: From World War II to the 1960s
During World War II, people recycled nylons, tin cans, cooking fats and even the tin in toothpaste tubes for the war effort.
And by the 1960s, the first recycling programs linked to people鈥檚 concern for the environment started popping up, says Martin Melosi, author of Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City. That鈥檚 when and others were pushing the science of ecology and Lyndon B. Johnson started passing a lot of environmental legislation.
鈥淎s the environmental movement begins to take hold on a national scale, recycling was seen as a personal manifestation of helping the environment,鈥 Melosi says. 鈥淭here was a sense of connection to the environment, similar to how it is now for my grandkids,鈥 he says.
In the early days of environmentally-bent recycling, the few people who did it carted everything to private recycling centers.
鈥淚t wasn't practical for the whole population, and people who were driving cars to bring stuff to recycling centers were polluting in a different way,鈥 Melosi says.
Full Landfills Prompt Curbside Recycling in 1970s
Beyond the do-gooders, though, most people in the throw-away society of the time didn鈥檛 think too much about preservation or reducing use...until landfills started filling up in the 1970鈥檚.
鈥淟andfilling was the most popular form of disposal after World War II,鈥 Melosi says, and recycling is a way to reduce tipping the balance. 鈥淚t takes things out of the waste stream, preserving landfill space. So recycling begins to have an economic and strategic role, different from just saving the environment.鈥
Curbside recycling programs solved the convenience issue, although the prevalence varied from city to city. In 1960, just over 6 percent of municipal solid waste was recycled. Since then, recycling rates have increased to about 10 percent in 1980; 16 percent in 1990; 29 percent in 2000, and over . That鈥檚 helped decrease the amount of waste going to landfills from 94 percent in 1960 to 52 percent of the amount generated in 2018.
The concept of Zero Waste took hold in the new millennium, challenging people to produce less waste by considering the front end of the problem鈥攖he disposable products people use instead of just the back end. Most waste-producing companies that were happy to support recycling didn鈥檛 hop on board the Zero Waste idea. Producing goods that leave a small environmental footprint is extremely challenging, Melosi says, and requires a complete culture shift.
鈥淚t鈥檚 fundamentally difficult to do,鈥 he says.
Still, in some cases, the 19th century lessons have even become trendy: Rag paper is a popular choice for wedding invitations.
