Imagine teaching your students about archaeology and having them actually investigate a culture using the objects people leave behind. Sounds like a great hands-on lesson, right? Unfortunately, most of our middle and high school students aren't going to have the opportunity to participate in a real archaeological dig. That doesn't mean they can't experience what it's like to examine evidence and draw conclusions about a society. Garbology offers a creative way to bring these skills into your social studies classroom using something your students encounter every day, which is trash! By treating discarded objects as a primary source, your students can investigate what everyday items reveal about people's habits, behaviors, and culture.
What Is Garbology, and How Does It Connect to Primary Sources?
Garbology is the study of trash to learn about human behavior and culture. Think about everything you throw away throughout a typical day. There might be food packaging, empty drink containers, receipts, or discarded papers. You probably don't give those items a second thought once they're in the trash. However, garbologists see them differently! They study discarded materials to better understand what people consume, how they live, and what they consider disposable.
This is where garbology makes an interesting connection to archaeology, a subject many of our students will encounter in their history classes. Archaeologists study physical evidence left behind by people in the past, including tools, pottery, buildings, and other artifacts. Garbologists use a similar approach, except they're investigating modern societies through their trash. Both fields involve examining evidence and asking questions about the people who used those objects. It's a great way to help your students recognize that studying a culture doesn't always require digging up ancient artifacts.
When we introduce primary sources in social studies, we often turn to historical letters, photographs, diaries, and government documents. What about the everyday objects people leave behind? Those can be primary sources, too! A discarded food wrapper, for example, might provide clues about what someone ate or purchased. Of course, one wrapper doesn't tell the whole story, and that's an important lesson for our students to learn. They need to examine multiple pieces of evidence before making conclusions about a culture.
William Rathje and the History of Garbology
While the idea of studying trash might make your students laugh at first, garbology has a fascinating history. William Rathje, an anthropology professor at the University of Arizona, is widely regarded as the father of garbology. In 1973, he and his students began the Garbage Project in Tucson, Arizona. Their goal was to study modern trash using archaeological methods to better understand human behavior. Who would have thought that something as ordinary as garbage could become the focus of such interesting research?
One of the most interesting findings from Rathje's research involved the differences between what people reported and what their trash revealed. Think about how easily someone might forget what they purchased or consumed when answering a survey. Their discarded materials, however, can provide additional evidence about their actual habits. This doesn't mean trash tells researchers everything about a person's life, but it can reveal patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The Garbage Project also challenged assumptions about what happens to waste in landfills. You might be surprised to learn that researchers discovered some materials, including paper and food, could remain well preserved for decades under certain landfill conditions. These findings helped researchers better understand how landfills work and why some materials decompose much more slowly than we might expect. Rathje's work also demonstrated that studying modern garbage could contribute valuable information to archaeology, anthropology, and waste management.
Get Your Students Thinking About What Trash Reveals
Before introducing a garbology project, get your students thinking about the connection between trash and historical evidence. Here's a question that might get their attention. What if an archaeologist discovered your family's discarded materials hundreds of years from now? What would those objects reveal about your everyday life? Would the archaeologist make any assumptions that weren't necessarily true? It's an interesting way to get your students thinking about how much we can learn from objects and how easily evidence can be misinterpreted.
You can extend the conversation with questions such as:
Why might trash reveal information that someone doesn't share in a survey or interview?
What could food packaging tell us about a person's daily habits?
What might discarded objects reveal about technology or entertainment?
What information would be difficult to determine from trash alone?
Why is it important to examine multiple pieces of evidence before drawing conclusions?
These questions encourage your students to think like researchers before beginning their own investigations. They also reinforce an important primary source analysis skill. Distinguishing between what the evidence actually shows and what we infer from it.
Introducing Garbology Through Videos and Classroom Resources
One of the easiest ways to introduce garbology is to let your students see what the research looks like. After all, most of your students have probably never considered that studying trash could be someone's actual job! The original Garbology Project includes a helpful list of videos, articles, and websites that you can use to introduce the topic. Rather than showing everything, choose a few resources that best support your lesson and the questions you want students to investigate.
There are several resources to check out, depending on your students and the direction of your lesson. How Landfills Work from HowStuffWorks can support a discussion about waste disposal, while The Story of Stuff explores consumption patterns. I also recommend the opening minutes of This American Life's Garbage episode. Any of these resources can help you to extend the conversation about the relationship between people's everyday choices and the materials they leave behind.
The free Garbology Project includes a Helpful Internet Sites page with these resources and additional examples of garbology research. Since some of the original links are older, be sure to preview the materials and check their availability before assigning them to your students.
Planning a Hands-On Garbology Project for Your Social Studies Class
Now comes the part that makes garbology especially interesting for your social studies classroom. Your students get to move beyond reading about archaeological research and begin examining evidence themselves! The original Garbology Project was designed for your students to investigate a modern culture by studying its discarded materials. They don't need to visit a landfill or participate in an archaeological excavation. Instead, they can investigate an approved location that gives them opportunities to observe, collect information, and develop conclusions.
My free project suggests locations such as a classroom, workplace, place of worship, or home. Your students may complete the investigation individually or with a partner. Before beginning, they must obtain permission to examine the discarded materials at their selected location. This requirement is an important part of the project because it reminds your students that researchers have responsibilities to the people and communities they study.
For classroom implementation, I recommend setting clear safety expectations before your students select their locations. One option is to provide clean, teacher-prepared collections of discarded materials rather than having your students handle actual garbage. For example, a collection of clean food packaging, empty containers, and other safe materials could represent the discarded items from a fictional classroom or household. Your students can still practice observing, categorizing, and interpreting evidence. If you're using this alternative, explain that it is a classroom simulation rather than an actual investigation of a site's trash.
Step 1: Choose a Garbology Site and Develop a Hypothesis
The first part of my free Garbology Project asks your students to select a location and write a letter requesting permission to examine its trash. A signed permission letter must be submitted with the completed project. Your students will also answer questions about where they plan to conduct their investigation, why they selected that location, and whom they need to contact for permission. These questions encourage your students to think carefully about the people or community they will be studying before collecting any evidence.
Next, your students will develop a hypothesis about what they expect to find. They consider what the discarded materials might reveal about the people who use the location, including their eating habits, drinking habits, and recreational activities. They also predict which types of items will make up most of the trash. This is a great opportunity to remind your students that a hypothesis is an educated prediction, not something they have to prove correct.
You might model this process using a familiar setting, such as a school classroom. Ask your students what types of discarded materials they would expect to find there. Would they predict more paper, food packaging, or empty drink containers? Why? Having your students explain their reasoning before investigating helps them understand the difference between an assumption and a conclusion supported by evidence.
Step 2: Collect and Record Garbology Evidence
Once your students have permission and a hypothesis, it's time to begin collecting information. Your students are required to visit their selected site at least twice. During each visit, they record the date and time and catalog the items they find. Your students are also instructed to take photographs to include in their final reports. These details help them create a record of their investigation rather than relying on memory.
Before your students begin, demonstrate what it means to catalog an item. Instead of writing something general like "food trash," your students should identify the type of item they observed. For example, they might record an empty cereal box, a plastic water bottle, or a paper lunch bag. Specific observations make it easier to identify patterns when your students begin analyzing their findings. They also help them avoid jumping to conclusions before examining all their evidence.
I would also remind your students that the goal isn't to collect the most trash or find the strangest object. Their job is to observe carefully and record information accurately. A small collection of ordinary objects can still provide useful evidence about daily life. This is the same idea we emphasize when analyzing historical primary sources. Even an everyday artifact can tell us something meaningful when we consider its context.
Step 3: Organize and Analyze Garbology Findings
After completing their site visits, your students will then organize their findings into a spreadsheet or graph. This is one of my favorite connections between garbology and historical inquiry because your students must begin looking for patterns in the evidence. Instead of simply listing everything they found, they need to consider what the information might reveal about the location they investigated. Organizing their findings also makes it easier to compare the results with their original hypothesis.
For example, imagine that your students investigate discarded materials from a classroom and discover that paper makes up most of the items recorded. They might initially conclude that the classroom uses a large amount of paper. However, you can encourage them to think more carefully about what the evidence supports. Were the materials collected on days when the students completed paper assignments? Would the results look different if they examined another classroom or visited at a different time?
This is where the primary source connection becomes especially valuable. Your students learn that evidence doesn't always provide a complete picture. Researchers need to consider the limitations of their findings. Encourage your students to identify patterns, explain what surprised them, and distinguish observations from interpretations.
Step 4: Present Garbology Research and Conclusions
The final part asks your students to create a presentation about their investigation. They explain their selected location, share their findings, and compare the results with their original hypothesis. In the resource, I give your students several presentation options, including a PowerPoint, video, oral presentation, or infographic. You can also give your students the chance to propose an original presentation idea for you to approve.
I would encourage your students to go beyond simply showing their graphs or listing the objects they found. Ask them to explain what their evidence suggests about the people or community they investigated. Did their findings support their original hypothesis? Were there any surprising discoveries? What questions remain unanswered? These conversations help your students understand that collecting evidence is only one part of historical and anthropological research.
You could also have your students compare the conclusions from different investigations during a class discussion. Your students might notice that different locations produce different types of discarded materials or that similar items appear in multiple settings. Ask them to consider how the purpose of a location might influence what people throw away. This brings the lesson back to the larger question of how physical evidence helps us understand a culture.
Teaching Research Ethics Through Garbology
An important part of any garbology project is understanding the responsibility that comes with studying other people. Anthropologists must consider how their research could affect the people and communities they study. This is an important conversation to have before your students begin examining any discarded materials.
My free Garbology Project specifically reminds your students to protect people's identities and avoid causing embarrassment or harm. Your students should not share names or personal information they might encounter during an investigation. This is another reason I recommend establishing clear expectations about what materials your students may examine. Items containing personal information, potentially hazardous materials, and anything that could compromise someone's privacy should be off-limits.
You can connect these expectations to the broader responsibilities of historians and researchers. Just because someone can access a piece of evidence doesn't mean they should share every detail they discover. Researchers must consider how they collect information, represent their findings, and communicate conclusions. Garbology provides a practical opportunity for your students to think about these responsibilities while working with primary source evidence.
Download the Free Garbology Project for Your Classroom
If you're ready to introduce garbology to your students, I've created a free Garbology: It's More Than Just Trash! resource to help you get started. It begins with background information about garbology, William Rathje, and the study of modern trash. Your students will be able to learn about the purpose of garbology before beginning their own investigations. The resource also includes information about garbage and a collection of helpful websites, articles, and videos related to the topic.
Whether you're teaching archaeology, anthropology, or primary source analysis, this project offers a different way for your students to practice examining evidence and drawing conclusions. It's a chance for them to see how everyday objects can help us understand the people who use them.
Bring Primary Source Analysis to Life with Garbology
Garbology reminds us that historical evidence doesn't always come from famous documents, important buildings, or extraordinary discoveries. Sometimes, the most ordinary objects can reveal interesting details about the people who used them. When your students examine discarded materials, they have an opportunity to practice many of the same skills historians and archaeologists use to investigate the past. They observe evidence, ask questions, test their assumptions, and develop conclusions based on what they discover.
The next time you're looking for a hands-on way to teach primary source analysis, consider bringing garbology into your social studies classroom. Your students might never look at an empty food wrapper or discarded piece of paper quite the same way again!
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Save this garbology post and project to your Pinterest board so you can find it when you're planning your next archaeology or social studies lesson!
