Explore 77 Trash Collections - Atlas Obscura
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All we know is it's 1943.
photography

Embracing the Mysteries of a Trove of Hungarian Photos, Rescued From the Dustbin of History

Glimpses of a century of everyday life.
Winnie Lee July 31, 2019
A garbage clean-up in downtown New York, 1890s.
food

When New Yorkers Were Menaced by Banana Peels

They slipped and fell. Really!
Alex Mayyasi July 24, 2019
<em>Fontigens cryptica</em>, finally found!
forests

Can a Snail Too Tiny to See Save a Kentucky Forest From a Gas Pipeline?

Sometimes the little things matter.
Sabrina Imbler July 12, 2019
Ethyl.
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Ethyl the Whale

Life-sized sculpture of a blue whale made of hand-recycled plastic trash.
Brooklyn, New York

Calvert Vaux Cove

This small, hidden cove is home to abandoned boats.
The islands are beautiful, but littered with trash, both conspicuous and hidden.
beaches

A Remote Australian Archipelago Is Home to Roughly 600 People and 414 Million Pieces of Trash

The Cocos (Keeling) Island chain is beautiful, but littered with plastic debris.
Jessica Leigh Hester May 16, 2019
Things weren't so pretty underground. A colossal fatberg snaked roughly 210 feet through a sewer pipe near the shore of Sidmouth.
sewers

A Pretty, Seaside Town in England Vanquished Its Giant Fatberg

It took several weeks, protective masks, and elbow grease. Oh, and also pickaxes.
Jessica Leigh Hester April 1, 2019
Guy Bar-Oz and his team survey the dump site.
ancient

When Garbage Collection Stops, Your City Might Be in Trouble

A Byzantine trash heap reveals the slow decline of a desert culture.
Jonathan Carey March 26, 2019
The Sidmouth fatberg is a heavy-duty mess.
sewers

7 Big Things That Are Smaller Than This Fatberg

A water company in Devon, England, found the enormous blob clogging the sewer.
Jessica Leigh Hester January 9, 2019
<em>Apollo 15</em> astronaut David Scott sampled the lunar surface in 1971.
insects

Humanity Has Managed to Change Places We've Barely Even Visited

From the Mariana Trench to the Moon, we don't have to be in a place very much to muck it up.
Jessica Leigh Hester January 4, 2019
Permanently Closed
The main entrance.
Mexico City, Mexico

Future Forest

A colorful "forest" made entirely from three tons of recycled plastic waste.
Little pieces of plastic pile up in waterways all over the world.
garbage

Trawling Through the Murky World of Microplastics

In waterways around the globe, the teeny tiny shreds are a big problem.
Jessica Leigh Hester July 24, 2018
For centuries, an older manuscript sheathed a 1480 edition of the Vulgate.
libraries

The Surprising Practice of Binding Old Books With Scraps of Even Older Books

For centuries, bookbinders commonly used whatever materials they could get—including entire manuscript pages.
Jessica Leigh Hester June 11, 2018
Mt. Cleese
Palmerston North, New Zealand

Mt. Cleese

A New Zealand rubbish dump named after British comedian John Cleese.
The sign, far from its intended audience.
signs

The World's Most Well-Traveled Real Estate Sign

It disappeared in New Jersey. Nearly six years later, it was found in France.
Cara Giaimo June 4, 2018
Materials at the warehouse.
Queens, New York

Materials for the Arts

A New York warehouse filled with an enormous amount of goods saved from the landfills and donated for creative use.
Real or not, Saint Clement's bone is a glorious find.
found

Found in the Garbage: A Supposed Bone of a First-Century Pope

Behold this holy trash.
Christina Ayele Djossa May 4, 2018
Permanently Closed
Nelson's Courtyard.
Saint Petersburg, Russia

Nelson's Courtyard

A surreal pile of colorful junk fills a small yard in an otherwise gray neighborhood.