History of Recycling

Dig into history and you find that Americans have recycled for centuries.

Two hundred years ago, women in New England villages used to meet at "quilting bees," where they would exchange news, gossip and leftover scraps of cloth that they then stitched into new bedcovers and blankets.

For many of America's early craftsmen, recycling was routine: Paul Revere, a hero of the American Revolution, was a silversmith, a trade that depended on melting down and reusing old silver.

In Japan, recycling has been practiced for hundreds of years. In public places such as city parks, you'll see separate containers for paper and cans.

Women in New York City sort through different grades of waste paper. circa 1900

Quote from magazine in 1894

"Even the smallest scrap of paper, that which every one throws away, here becomes a source of profit. Old provisions tins, for instance, are full of money; the lead soldering is removed and melted down into cakes, while the tin goes to make children's toys.

Old boots, however bad, always contain in the arch of the foot at least one sound piece that will serve again, and generally there are two or three others in the sole, the heel, and at the back.

Scraps of paper go to the cardboard factory, orange peel to the marmalade maker, and so on.

The ideas suggested are not always agreeable, and to see a rag picker fishing orange peel out of the basket is enough to make one forswear [give up] marmalade; but there is worse than that.

The most valuable refuse – that which fetches two francs the kilo – is hair; the long goes to the hair dresser [for wigs], while the short is used, among other things, for clarifying oils.

Scientific American
September 1, 1894