The San Francisco Transfer Station and the Alienation of Domestic Discards

• In Event: Wastescapes: Managing Excess in the Twentieth-Century United States

Abstract

This paper analyzes the development of modern, urban, waste transfer stations in the 1950s and 1960s, and how it altered the relationship between urban waste producers and the environmental impact of their discards. In the 1960s, situating dumps and landfills in or close to urban centres became more contentious politically and environmentally, and cities like San Francisco were forced to look further afield for landfill sites. While transfer stations were a utilitarian logistical development, they had major downstream environmental and cultural effects. They helped to alleviate health and environmental impacts in cities, but caused many more at the major regional landfill hubs hundreds of miles away; and they allowed for the further alienation of urban people from the consequences of their massive consumption. Public ire about the impact of landfills was blunted by distance, out of sight and out of mind, which served to facilitate ever increasing rates of consumption and disposability.

Author

• Maximillian Clee, Boston University