By 1970, Americans were making garbage faster than cities could handle it. This photograph captures a sanitation worker clearing refuse from a Harlem tenement basement—a daily struggle that sparked the modern environmental movement and changed how we think about what we throw away.
The basement is dim, cramped. A metal can, heavy and dented, waits at the cellar stairs. The worker leans in, grabs the rim, hauls it up into daylight. Upstairs, families live above mountains of their own discarded things. There's no away—just somewhere else.
Reflect
Where does your garbage go after the truck picks it up?