Recycle pickup kiawah summer islands12/17/2023 The precise location or locations of garbage dumping in eighteenth-century Charleston must have been abundantly obvious to local residents and visitors, but our knowledge of such waste disposal practices is now exceedingly sparse. An amendment adopted in 1764 empowered the street commissioners to direct the scavengers “to remove all filth and rubbish to such proper place or places, in or near the said town, as they, the said commissioners, or a majority of them, shall allot and point out for the reception of the said filth and rubbish.” The initial law for this weekly curb-side collection service did not specify what was to become of the garbage after it was collected, however. The gentlemen commissioners were empowered to appoint scavengers, who in turn employed teams of enslaved men to drive horse-drawn carts through the streets each week to collect garbage, manure, and other refuse. Episode 171: A Trashy History of Charleston’s Dumps and Incineratorsĭuring Charleston’s early decades as an unincorporated town, the provincial government occasionally issued orders for public officers to keep the streets cleared of refuse and various forms of “filth.” Such ad-hoc prescriptions became a regular practice in 1750, when the provincial government created a board of street commissioners for urban Charleston.As a consequence of this common practice, much of what we know about the material culture of early South Carolina is derived from materials excavated by archaeologists from former privies and wells. Small quantities of such trash frequently ended up in earthen privies (outdoor bathrooms) within private yards. Only “rubbish” that could not be recycled or consumed by animals or flames-such as broken ceramics and glass-was cast aside outside the home. Food waste was fed to animals or composted in the household garden. The twin smokestacks towering over Charleston’s East Side anchor an important part of the city’s trashy history.īefore the advent of the technology of mass production and the rise of modern consumer culture, the people of early South Carolina produced very small quantities of what we would call “garbage.” Worn-out goods like clothing, furniture, vehicles, and buildings materials were either recycled or converted into fuel for cooking and heating. The advent of new landfill practices in the 1950s consigned the city’s trash burners to the proverbial dust bin, but creative recycling preserved the fabric of one important structure. During the first half of the twentieth century, the City of Charleston addressed rising volumes of municipal waste by flip-flopping between traditional methods of open dumping and the new science of incineration. Garbage disposal is an ancient part of human culture that grew exponentially in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.
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