by John Tierney

About the author: John Tierney is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine.

As they put on plastic gloves for their first litter hunt, the third graders knew what to expect. They knew their garbage. It was part of their science curriculum at Bridges Elementary, a public school on West 17th Street in Manhattan. They had learned the Three R’s—Reduce, Reuse, Recycle—and discussed how to stop their parents from using paper plates. For Earth Day they had read a Scholastic science publication, “Inside the World of Trash.” For homework, they had kept garbage diaries and drawn color-coded charts of their families’ trash. So they were primed for the field experiment on this May afternoon.

Analyzing Trash

“We have to help...