Category: Waste reduction and prevention

Having a fair background in history and archaeology helps to understand present days. I always say, we learn from the past to understand the present.
Did you know that second hand clothes shops are attested since the XIII century in France?
They existed in Paris and other cities, it’s an urban habit but was surely present in the country side. In fact, the second-hand garment was the common way to procure clothes at that time. Second hand shops sold and rented clothes. Following the changing fashion, the rich class would get rid of their clothes to pass them over to their servants after being sewn up or transformed, or sold to second hand merchants. Religious charities took care of the most vulnerable and poor.
Like many other goods, until the XX century, clothes were not dumped. They were integrated in a recycling economy and they were worn till their very end. XVI century French inventories attest that garments were disassemble to reuse them elsewhere, re-dye and insert them in another circle. It was a trade of pieces to replace, refill or reuse as raw material.To dye the textile, natural colorants were used, that would degrade in nature with time.

The most commonly used:

Red was the color of imperial, royal and ducal robes, so it was worn mainly by rich people. The red color was obtained from the insect Kermes Ilicis.
Brick red, on the other hand, was obtained from madder, which was a low-cost dye and, for this reason, was widely used for the most common fabrics.
Purple, similar to red, was obtained through murici, marine molluscs.
Violet was obtained from blackcurrants or common poppies.
Brown was inexpensive and therefore widely used, especially by the lower classes. It was obtained by macerating the leaves, bark, flowers and roots of plants.
Green was also a very popular pigment. It was mainly obtained from verdigris.
Yellow had negative meanings and, for this reason, was rarely used. Yellow was obtained from saffron stigmas, chamomile or blackberries.

Have you ever wondered how the human waste was managed before the plastic even existed?
Let’s consider the waste composition till the 20^th century: according to what archaeologists mostly find during excavations, it contained food waste, used clothes made of cotton, linen, wool and leather; shoes made of wood and leather; broken pottery; animal bones or rests; broken furniture. All of this was usually thrown in landfills, pits, or channels throughout the city, or collected by a dedicated service. The accumulation of different types of waste generated stench and spread diseases or viruses throughout the circulation of rodents, posing risks to human health. Nevertheless, we have no evidence of a permanent impact on the environment.

Did you know that:

• The first attested mention of “making compost for agricultural use” dates back to the Akkadian empire, in the Middle East, back to 2350 BC. (Source)
•  In ancient Greece, people living in cities were supposed to carry their garbage out of town to specific deposits.
• The Ancient Romans were the first to create the world’s earliest sewage system, the Cloaca Massima, it began as an open-air canal which drained the water and removed the waste from the city, then became a larger construction later in time.  (Source). The Cloaca emptied into the Tiber River, thus polluting the drinking water used by the Romans. Aside from this system, another was paying collecting service that carried on chariots the garbage of houses not connected to the sewer out of town. (Source)
• In the middle age, there was no system, the population was rare and there was a lot of space where dispose the rubbish, out of towns or fortresses.
• In the late 17^th century, in New Amsterdam (now New York) the first law was issued to punish littering: it was prohibited to throw or leave waste in the streets. (Source)
• In 1757 Benjamin Franklin organized a first cleaning service, encouraging people to dig pits to get rid of their waste. (Source)
• In the 19^th century London introduced the first municipal waste collection system, “dustmen” were employed to remove the trash from homes and streets, bring it to a central depot and finally into a landfill. (Source)
• The first time an incinerator was used as a waste management method, was in 1874 in the UK, followed by the USA. (Source)