his students. But the game turned serious; a team of trained research- ers has since analyzed, weighed, and catalogued household refuse in Tucson, Milwaukee, Marin County (California), and Mexico City.
One advantage of garbage research is that it uncovers what people would rather not reveal about themselves or might not even know. There is, for example, a considerable disparity between how much alco- hol people say they drink and the number of wine and liquor bottles that actually turn up in...