Trash Matters: Sociology of Waste

We throw away garbage every day. We don’t question that. The question we must ask comes after that. Has anyone thought that the garbage we throw away is divided into categories and has different meanings? Perhaps we have never looked at waste from such a different perspective. But it wouldn’t be absurd to think whether or not trash could be a matter of sociology in any way. How, let me tell you.

To bring a new perspective to food variation, canned food coming from the garbage of a specific region gives us the message of a food culture that is far from the fresh eating culture. It is possible to obtain a geographical inference according to the type of food. For this reason, it is not a coincidence that there are many of fish wastes on the seashore or that there are many animal wastes in a city that lives on animal husbandry.

Garbage also provides important information about business life. While metal, plastic, or chemical waste is expected to be abundant in a destination where the industry is developed, it can be observed that agricultural waste such as animal manure and various fruit and vegetable parts is common in regions where agriculture is dominant. 

Garbage is a potential area of social analysis that contains much more than just discarded waste. Significant references can be identified in minor and major areas, from economic classes to geographical regions, from business life to city structures. Therefore it's possible to look at trash from a different perspective than ever before.