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When it comes to waste, I spontaneously associate waste separation, microplastics, space debris and my son's last waste collection campaign at school. I have no idea about my personal amount of waste – statistically speaking. A page from the Ministry of Agriculture with the Federal Waste Management Plan 2023 provides details. Current data is contained here in the 2025 status report for the year 2023. In 2023, the domestic per capita waste generation was 3,194 kilograms (excluding excavated materials), the equivalent of 8.75 kilograms per day. The waste mix recorded here is incredibly colorful. The personal crap bag doesn't weigh that heavy. 226 kilograms per year (2023), or just 60 decagrams per day, fall into the category that we dispose of every day ("mixed municipal waste and similar commercial waste [residual waste]"). Depending on the source, the values vary. “519 kilos of waste per capita: How we can deal with garbage better” can be found in an article in STANDARD on February 27, 2023. That is far too much. Reason enough to delve deeper here.
Roman Köster, research associate at the historical commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, devotes a total of 422 pages to the topic of waste. He divides his book "Garbage" into three major sections, the pre-modern era, the industrial age and mass consumption. Around a quarter of the volume (from page 319) is taken up by notes, sources and literature, which underlines the profound work of Köster, who completed his habilitation on German waste management after the Second World War.
The introduction, subtitled "A World Full of Garbage", begins with an unmistakable statement: "Humans and garbage - they have a long and intimate relationship. Where there is garbage, there are people. People always produce garbage." Nobody can ignore these sentences! Köster has researched global figures: "In terms of plastic waste alone, humanity produces the weight of around 100 Eifel towers every day." He refers to an article in the magazine Spektrum.de from February 22, 2022.
The first section ("Pre-modernity"), whose first chapter begins with the subtitle "Heap of rubbish" (page 21), also starts provocatively: "Early historical archeology conducts its research on humanity's rubbish dumps." Basically he's right. Waste pits give archaeologists insights into the diet, clothing and animal husbandry of early ancient people (page 24).
The “Industrial Age” part brings up an essential aspect: urbanization, i.e. the concentration of people in urban areas, which took place in the 19th century. By 1900, the level of urbanization in the United States was already more than 50 percent (page 110). Consequently, it is about urban hygiene, whereby the cholera epidemics are also discussed here. See “The Long Farewell to the Cesspool”. What remained was the solid waste (household waste). Here are a few numbers: In 1905, the Americans threw away 430 kilograms, the English 225, and the German city dwellers just 120 kilograms (page 134). Garbage collection organized by municipalities really took off in the 1880s. After Frankfurt (1873) as a pioneer, Mannheim (1880), Paris (1883) and Rome (1886) followed. In Vienna, the legendary manure farmer was responsible for this.
While recycling, i.e. reusing, was a given in the first half of the 20th century, it disappeared from consciousness in the years of the economic miracle. This brings us to the third section, “Mass Consumption”. While Japan set an example in the recycling of household waste in the 1970s, the USA and Western Europe followed suit in the 1980s (page 292f) in order to get the growing mountains of waste under control. The conclusion is the epilogue “Into the Sea” (pages 312 to 318). The topic is the pollution of the world's oceans (keyword: garbage patches in the world's oceans), which was discussed from the 1960s onwards.
Michael Stachowitsch, a native of Austria, grew up in the USA but returned to study marine biology under Rupert Riedl at the University of Vienna. In the course of his years of research in the depths and shallows of the seas and oceans, he also devoted himself to the dirty legacy of human civilization, the garbage that he found on beaches. Lisa Breit titled a portrait of Stachowitsch in the “Ideas for a Better World” series in STANDARD with “A marine biologist fights for clean beaches.” If you look at his book "Trash Can Beach" (2024), which was first published in 2019 under the title "The Beachcomber's Guide to Marine Debris", and if you have also heard him give a lecture, you have to differentiate "fighting" a bit. Stachowitsch is not a fanatical environmental activist; rather, Stachowitsch is a scientist who devotes himself to the topic with due meticulousness. The focus of this book is on the narrow, mostly sandy edge where the ocean waves meet the land, on the beach.
Scientific research begins with observing and documenting, which is followed by categorizing and interpreting. This is also how Stachowitsch's "Trash Can Beach" is structured. Almost 700 photos make up the contents of the book (420 pages), which is divided into 16 chapters (including an introduction). "Virtually every type of object ever made by humans has been found on a beach somewhere." Begins the introductory book guide (page 1). The book's concept is "similar to that of many nature guides". Specifically, Stachowitsch gives us an identification book where the often fragmented and eroded objects that can be found on beaches can be more easily classified. Photos and image descriptions allow identification of the origin of the waste, which either comes from land or is washed up from the sea as man-made pollution. If necessary, warnings are also provided. Barrel-sized canisters should be considered hazardous waste. "Never open it!" (page 132) is his advice to aspiring beach detectives.
The structure of the chapters is based on materials (glass, metal, plastic, wood, paper, oil & tar, organic waste, etc.) and human categories (hygiene, smoking, fishing gear, water sports, medical waste, clothing, etc.); at the end there is a list of scientific literature. Stachowitsch's approach is not one of pointing the finger, but rather he knows how to inform, motivate and grab his readership with honor, but also with humor. "Every cup is destined to become marine litter unless they do something about it." (page 112). Given these words, who would simply “forget” their drink cup on the sandy beach? This makes it clear: Preventing marine litter on the beach or removing it – everyone can actively contribute to this.
Conclusion: "Garbage - A Dirty History of Humanity" is intended to be a comprehensive, broad-based presentation of the theme that runs through the entire history of humanity. The richly illustrated book "Trash Can Beach" is similar to an identification key for the garbage that is described and documented here and is littering beaches around the world and is a reflection of the consumer and throwaway society of the 20th and 21st centuries. (Thomas Hofmann, May 30, 2025)