What is Garbology? Interview with Leila and Omran

We spoke with archaeologists Leila Papoli-Yazdi and Omran Garazhian about what garbage can reveal about societies.

When we think of archaeology, temples, tombs, and artistic artifacts often come to mind. However, for archaeologists, one of the most valuable sources of information is garbage. The waste left behind by ancient societies provides crucial insights into their daily lives, consumption habits, diets, and interactions with their environment. For instance, food remains at an excavation site can reveal what people ate, broken pottery fragments can shed light on trade networks, and traces of melted metal can inform us about craftsmanship and production processes.

Archaeologists, who have long traced the past through discarded materials, are now increasingly studying modern societies as well. By analyzing contemporary waste, researchers can uncover significant data on consumption patterns, environmental sustainability, and economic inequalities. This is where garbology—a field that helps us understand both the past and the present—comes into play as an innovative research area.

In this interview, we spoke with Leila Papoli-Yazdi and Omran Garazhian about the insights garbology offers into societies, how it emerged as a field, and how it is applied in the modern world. From their academic journey spanning from Iran to Sweden to the ways garbology can contribute to communities, don’t miss this fascinating interview!

1- First of all, could you introduce yourselves? How did your interest in archaeology begin, and what led you to specialize in garbology?

Leila: 

I am Leila Papoli-Yazdi, a 46-year-old archaeologist specializing in the contemporary past. I am originally from Iran and am a member of a small group of archaeologists who experienced the archaeology of contemporary past for the first time in the Middle East. Currently based in Sweden, I work as a garbologist, and am a co-founder of Garbonomix, which is a start-up focusing on the archaeology of garbage or garbology.

I was born in Paris, France. As a child, around the age of four or five, I often accompanied my father to a cultural center, home to one of Paris’s few public computer rooms at the time. While he worked on his dissertation, I watched documentaries—mainly about ancient Egypt, as there wasn’t much else for children. That was my first encounter with archaeology, and it sparked a lifelong fascination.

Years later, when it came time to choose a field of study in Iran’s university entrance exam, I selected archaeology. But as I progressed in my studies, I became increasingly frustrated by how little my professors engaged with modern society. I kept wondering: How can archaeology contribute to solving contemporary issues?

That question stayed with me until, by chance, I came across In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz, a book about the archaeology of ordinary people in modern times. It completely changed my perspective.

In 2003, alongside my colleagues, including Omran, I started a study in Bam, Iran, after a devastating earthquake. We applied garbology techniques to analyze architectural ruins alongside other methodologies such as archaeology of disaster and social archaeology. But our true turning point came during a project in Tehran focused on poverty. There, we discovered the power of garbology in revealing overlooked aspects of life—insights that could help communities. Since then, I’ve continued this work in Sweden, using archaeology to better understand and address modern challenges.

Omran:

I grew up in a rural area. I was interested in social sciences, economics, and history. I chose archaeology in the university entrance exam at the University of Tehran and was accepted. Perhaps I could write that I got into archaeology by accident. I started doing archaeological fieldwork in my third year of my bachelor’s degree. But again, by accident, during the fieldwork for my master’s thesis, I realized that archaeological methods were not enough for me. Without knowing it, I got into modern archaeology and ethnoarchaeology. Then this path led to garbology.

2- What exactly is garbology? How different is it from traditional archaeology?

Leila: 

Garbology is a subfield of a branch of archaeology, which is called the archaeology of the contemporary past. Archaeology of the contemporary past uses the methods of archaeology like excavation and survey to study the modern things. The archaeologists of contemporary past think that archaeology is not only about the past, but it has the potential to elucidate the modern world and long-term processes. 

Another interesting thing about this branch of archaeology is that it changed the angle of archaeology from studying “the others” to studying “us”. One of the first books written about this branch was “ The Archaeology of Us” by three prominent figures of contemporary archaeology, William Rathje, Richard Gould, and Brian Schiffer which had a great influence on applying archaeology in the modern world.

From a methodological viewpoint, archaeology of the contemporary past uses the same methods as traditional archaeology, but the mindset of the archaeology of the contemporary past is different because they want to find a way to be influential on the modern society.

Omran:

Garbology is the application of archaeological methods to modern-day issues and materials. It is completely separate from traditional archaeology, which is simply classified as a historical science. In it, materials are the focus, not time and history. Also, humans have meaning in the living context, and materials have almost entirely a specific modern meaning. The method of identifying waste from the foundation, in my opinion, is different from the method of identifying ancient materials in archaeology. Garbology is closer to modern behavioural sciences than archaeology in its traditional sense.

3- When was this methodology first used? Is there a well-known example?

Leila: 

Officially, garbology was started in 1973 by Professor William Rathje. However, Rathje started to look at garbage as a subject of archaeology years before the time of starting the project. He and his colleagues interviewed a huge number of families in a project called “front door, back door” where one of the garbologists studied the garbage bins in the back of the buildings while another person interviewed the family members. “Garbage project” by Rathje is a pioneer project that excavated landfills in the USA and Canada during the 1980s and 1990s. It could propose many suggestions to improve the quality of waste management systems and communities’ economy years before that debates on waste and climate change became a trend. 

Omran:

It was developed during the 1970s and during the economic crisis of the early 1970s. The most well-known example is based on the activities of William Rathje’s garbage Project. But that example was not successful in competing with scientific approaches to waste. This failure is not due to individuals, but to the nature of the competition of human sciences and knowledge.

4- Why is garbology important? How does it contribute to our understanding of both modern societies and the past?

Leila: 

It is important to consider that garbology primary objective is not to promote garbage but to highlight why and how waste is being produced and how hyperconsumerism deteriorates people’s economy. Garbology sees all the things that we discard as “bought things”, the things we have consumed money over, and when we discard them, it means that we are discarding money. Regarding this, garbology has the potential to help people, businesses, and municipalities to improve their behaviours towards waste disposal. To do this, garbology makes behavioural patterns and models. As a result, it can help people to have a better economy. This can help them to become more resilient against problems such as inflation and economic recessions. 

Omran:

I don’t think it helps us understand pre-modern societies much except with very open anthropological approaches. Garbology is important to me because of its relevance to the mass production process, the very high consumption of modern societies, and the materials that are produced solely for packaging and ultimately disposal. All of what I have described above is relevant to the modern world. It is a modern approach that is relevant to the modern world. Its importance is because it can develop with modernism.

5- What type of waste do you specifically study? Do you focus on everyday household trash, industrial waste, or a particular period or society?

Leila: 

Any type of waste can be studied by garbology. Also, the marginalized communities that are considered surplus in society can be subjects of garbology. 

Omran and I in our start-up, Garbonomix, mostly study the garbage made by households, businesses, and municipalities. Some of our other colleagues study marine, nuclear, or toxic waste as well. 

Omran:

I study all types of non-toxic and hazardous waste, but I am most interested in waste that is directly related to human behaviour. That is why I am very interested in the cycles of materials in human society. Garbology for me is more a part of my multidisciplinary approach to human society. Material, humans and their behaviour, and of course, place are my priorities. Time in its historical sense is not exciting to me. That is why I doubt that I can introduce myself as an archaeologist in the traditional sense. The period in question does not mean time to me; it is more about materials and human behaviour and development.

6- Have you ever come across a discovery in your garbology research that surprised or deeply impacted you?

Leila: 

Yes! When we were studying garbage containers in Tehran, we found remains of fast food in a very poor area. Later, we could connect this with the lives of sex workers who exchange their service with food. It was a very sad finding but at the same time revealed one of the overlooked behavioural patterns of sex workers in Tehran. 

Omran:

Yes and no! I was really excited when we discovered metal chip cans in a large landfill in Sweden that were still within their expiration date because the police and the city council had claimed to have prevented the accumulation of waste at that site for two years. Our discovery showed that waste was still being accumulated daily and secretly at that time. The second memory is methodological: I had a hypothesis. The crisis-stricken community of Bam in southeastern Iran would either abandon it after the earthquake or return to its normal life before the earthquake. Only three months into the fieldwork did I discover in practice that the community would never return to the way it was. I was so excited by this simple discovery that I couldn’t sleep one night. I had realized my mistake in practice and this excited me. After that discovery, I could never be the same traditional archaeologist I had been.

7- How does waste analysis help us understand modern human behavior? For example, what kind of data does it provide on consumption habits, sustainability, or environmental issues?

Leila: 

We usually consider a cycle from purchase to waste disposal. Regarding this, we pay attention to what people buy, how much they buy, how they prepare it, and finally what they discard. Putting all this information together gives us a repetitive behavioural pattern and something which we call consumption routines. By improving consumption routines, we can prevent waste disposal of usable things and bring them back to the cycle of consumption. The numbers show that more than 30% of food and 50% of the other things that we dispose of are edible and usable. Garbologists consider this usable waste as wasted money. 

Omran:

Your question is very general. Modern humans are so distracted and short-tempered that without Garbology they cannot remember their daily behaviours. Behaviours happen in space and have spatial patterns, of course they happen in time in the modern sense, I mean time with a point view. Today, everything that happens is the result of human activities. Consider global warming. As a result, in my opinion, fundamentally, there is no more sustainability. I don’t know if it was prehistoric in the past or not, I think it was, but in modern times, sustainability is a nostalgic slogan, I could even write, it is nothing more than a deception. Modern human behaviours have changed and destroyed everything, nature and the environment, so sustainability is just nostalgia. Alas, it refers to the past, not the future!!

8- What is it like to work on garbology in Sweden? How do waste management policies and sustainability approaches in the country shape your research?

Leila: 

Sweden’s waste management system is one of the best in the world, with more than 80% of waste being recycled. But it does not mean that all the behaviours towards consumption and waste disposal are fine. Sweden, like many other countries, is suffering from hyper consumption. This and other problems have caused the emergence of illegal landfills in Sweden. So, like many other places of the world, there is a need for garbologists. We try to study and fix harmful behaviours towards waste disposal, and also try to figure out the patterns of marginalization of people and help them to improve their economy. 

Omran:

Swedish society, in my opinion, is a closed society, at least in small towns. Waste management policies are more about using it than reducing it. And these theories have maintained and developed their modernist dominance. Swedes think that 100% of the waste they produce is recycled, and this is a misconception that the relevant sectors have created. As a result, sustainability policies are a major obstacle to our research activities. I think so. They see waste reduction as an obstacle to their development, at least in the sectors of natural gas production from waste, and this is a disaster.

9- Have you noticed significant differences between Sweden and other countries in terms of waste culture? Do societies differ in how they produce and dispose of waste?

Leila: 

There is a tradition in rural areas of Sweden which I find very interesting and have written an article on it. People keep some old things for a very long time and do not discard them. Even if they want to get rid of them, they donate these things to second-hand shops. Son, old things remain for a long time in the consumption cycle before becoming useless. 

Yes, every culture develops its own behaviours towards consumption and waste disposal. 

Omran:

I cannot answer this question reliably due to limited information from other countries. The best answer is: I don’t know

10- What are your thoughts on the future of garbology? How do you see research in this field evolving in the coming years?

Leila: 

One of the biggest problems of the world is the increasing economic pressure on the Middle and working classes. We are trying to develop garbology in a way that can serve people in need by improving their consumption routines and economy. 

Omran:

I think horticulture does not have a bright future in the industrial world, due to the competition between scientific sectors and their dominance over public opinion.

11- Finally, could you tell us about the Garbonomix you launched in Sweden? What is its aim, and how has it progressed so far?

Leila: 

As I mentioned, the core aim of Garbonomix is to be influential on the lives of people from the middle classes and the poor by improving their economy. We strongly believe that a society which is concerned for its economy and inflation has no room to think about sustainability. So, by making families and small businesses more economically resilient, we try to improve the quality of life of people. Till now, our customers could have on average a +23% improvement in their savings after three months of consulting with us, which is a great result for us, and we would like to enhance it by inviting more people to use garbology.

Omran: 

Our goal is to live a creative and dynamic life in the society we have immigrated to. We are using our past experiences in this goal. I think it has not been very good so far because I think society has a certain mentality towards immigrants. They think that immigrants are always manual workers and poorly educated. This idea has blocked the way to sudden prosperity. This society is also a society of gradual growth. If we live another hundred years, we will reach a stable situation.

12- Anything you want to add?

Leila: 

Thanks for having us! We would like to invite all the readers of this interview to use garbology as a means of improving their lives and economy. If you need help in doing this, wherever you live, you can use Garbonomix online consultation meetings, which are free of charge but can put an important influence on your consumption routines and economy.

Omran:

Modern life and its relationships are a disaster, and Garbology is walking on the ashes of garbage where the fire is still burning under the ashes.