In 1987, a crew navigated a barge full of New York City trash down the East Coast in search of a place to dump the ship’s cargo. Unfortunately, there were no takers, and the barge, named Mobro 4000, traveled as far as Mexico via the Caribbean Sea before returning to New York City, where its cargo was buried just a few miles away on Long Island. The highly publicized event generated concern that American cities were running out of landfill space in which to bury garbage. However, the Mobro 4000 was turned away from numerous ports for reasons that had nothing to do with a landfill shortage. As Mary H. Cooper, a researcher with the CQ Researcher, reports, “The barge operator had simply set sail without signing any agreements with landfill operators to dump its garbage, and port authorities...