Most of our waste ends up in landfills, despite how much we try to recycle and use alternatives, so it made sense to study them. I chose to work at a landfill because I wanted to know what it was like on the inside, as someone paid to take care of waste for everyone else. I wanted to know what that felt like, and I thought my co-workers would be more likely to talk to me about their experiences if they saw me in a uniform too.

Lam: Is this what you refer to as the "social relationship" of waste, as opposed to the environmentalism aspect that’s commonly discussed?

Reno: Partly, yes. We rely on other people to work with, and to be exposed to, waste on our behalf. Because there are very few, very big landfills and many communities who depend on them, that means that some people and places bear a disproportionate burden. Rural communities, in general, bear this burden, and some states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia, import a lot of waste on behalf of others. They are making a sacrifice on all our behalf, but when we think of waste we are more likely write them out of the picture and think only of nature in the abstract, and a vulnerable earth we are overusing and polluting.

If we recognize this, we might also ask ourselves whether anyone wants to be closer to waste. In other societies, throughout the world, it’s understood that some informal recyclers live near and work with everyone else’s waste in order to enrich themselves. People do that in our country too, but we don’t tend to give them access to the best waste.

Lam: Tell me about the inequalities of waste in the U.S.

Reno: There is a lot of space in the U.S. for landfills, yet there are some communities that end up taking a lot more waste than others. Since there are very few, big landfills, you need a lot of space for one now. You also need to be relatively close to a highway so you can transport waste from further and further away to get there, and you need cheap land for sale and you can’t have strong resistance from the surrounding community.

What that means is that rural places with a small tax base and less political organization are more likely to end up with a big waste site in their backyard. As a result, most waste sites end up located near communities of color and poorer people. So even though we have so much space in this country, compared to others, we still end up exposing disadvantaged and minority groups to everyone else’s waste. The small rural town I studied had two landfills, which is unusual. And this was a consequence of an aging, farming population that couldn’t say no. The landfill that ended up there was supposed to go in a whiter, wealthier town nearby, but they successfully resisted. The waste from Canada that ended up going there was supposed to go to indigenous-held lands in Northern Ontario, but they successfully resisted. Waste tends to end up where people can’t hold it back anymore.