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Dempster Dumpster and the History of Waste Management

Dempster Dumpster and the History of Waste Management

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We take refuse management for granted. We throw our candy wrappers in a trashcan without thinking twice about where it goes, what the wrapper is made of, and who put that trashcan there in the first place. Without early innovative ideas of municipal organization, our planet would literally be covered in trash. In 2012 alone, the world accumulated roughly 2,600,000,000,000 pounds of trash (that’s trillions if you have trouble counting zeroes.)

Our ancestors had to get creative when disposing waste, but creative does not necessarily mean good. In hindsight, their primitive resolutions were band aids on what would turn into a global health crisis. The dumpster aided in providing an organized solution to a messy problem. Here is a quick 2520-year dumpster history lesson in 1000 words.

Ancient Waste Management

Just because plastic, cardboard, and styrofoam weren’t around in Ancient Greece doesn’t mean trash didn’t exist. Greeks had plenty of waste – food, animal carcasses, poop, raggedy clothes, etc. You don’t need much brainpower to realize trash should at least be out of your general vicinity. The easy answer in 500 B.C. was for individuals to take trash out past the city walls, according to the Taras Oceanography Foundation.  The general rule was a mile outside the city.

The First "Garbage Truck"

According to Filip Havíček and Miroslav Morcinek in the Journal of Landscape Ecology, The Roman Empire created the first garbage collection service. They built the first dumpster on wheels (really just a cart pulled by horses if you want to be blunt). The invention was the first step toward a modern day garbage truck. Regardless of its simplicity, it was the first organized attempt at tackling its society’s waste issue. The process was straightforward – Romans threw their trash in the street, the garbage collectors picked it up and took it to a big hole in the ground.

14th Century Europe/18th Century America

Unfortunately, the original garbage collection method didn’t last long. The mass amount of open land made littering easy and accessible – out of sight, out of mind. After hundreds of years, though, trash began to accumulate. Garbage and rats filled the streets. In “A Historical Context of Municipal Solid Waste Management in the United States, ” Garrick Louis says trash accumulation contributed to the cause of the Black Plague in Europe that killed 25 million people, so remember to thank your waste management professionals when they pick up your junk on Tuesday morning.

Fast forward about 400 years to the 1700s. Waste disposal was up to the individual. Property owners either buried or burned their trash. Many people preferred tossing unwanted materials into lakes and rivers. Trash expert and historian Martin Melosi says, “In eastern cities, where crowding became a chronic problem as early as the 1770s, the streets reeked with waste, wells were polluted, and deaths from epidemic disease mounted rapidly. ...As late as the 1860s, Washingtonians dumped garbage and slop into alleys and streets, pigs roamed freely, slaughterhouses spewed nauseating fumes, and rats and cockroaches infested most dwellings including the White House.”

By the 1890s, the United States had very basic forms of waste management. It wasn’t until forty years later every city in the country had a system. One of the favored strategies was throwing trash in the ocean. Waste not thrown in waterways was incinerated.

The Dempster Dumpster

George Dempster

George Roby Dempster – the father of the modern-day dumpster. As a long-time construction worker with vast knowledge of heavy machinery, he had big ideas to change the trash game. In 1935, he invented the Dempster-Dumpster, the first portable bin that could be lifted and dropped from a truck. The new receptacle model became popular because of its convenience and cost-effectiveness.

George Dempster geared his invention to construction companies as well as residential areas. He built several types of containers. The completely enclosed, black container was advertised as rat-proof, rat-proof, fly-proof, wind-proof, fire-proof, and scavenger-proof.

The dumpsters helped several core aspects of society. When a landfill at the swamp completely filled, the sanitation plant would bury the trash, flatten the ground above, and use the land to build playgrounds and parks for children.

The Dinosaur Dumpster

The Dinosaur Dumpster in 1958 closely resembles today’s big open-top roll off dumpsters. The truck’s hydraulic cylinders could move the skip frame up and down while cables lifted or dropped the container. However, machine operators opposed the technology. They claimed the new parts would cause too many expensive maintenance problems. They also thought the cables would snap over time from loading and unloading 30,000-pound dumpsters.

Changes needed to be made. Dempster replaced the cables with new cylinders that pull a dumpster up the truck frame. Watch this video for a better idea.

George Dempster fundamentally changed the game of waste disposal. Today, you can walk a couple blocks without seeing a roll off dumpster. Every restaurant and apartment complex has some sort of a receptacle that a garbage truck hauls away. Dempster changed society for the better.

Final Thoughts

We’ve come a long way from the early days of Ancient Rome’s organized littering. Despite its flaws, horse drawn carriages as trash collectors paved the way for George Dempster’s dumpsters.

Trash will always be here. From composting to recycling, humans continue to find new methods of reusing and disposing waste. It'll be interesting to see what the next few decades have in store for dumpster innovations.

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