Waste management is one of the most distinct features of modern society.
Rubbish removal services, no matter whether they are council based junk removals or such provided by private companies, are what keeps our cities clean and safe. You may rarely think about how waste management is conducted at your place of residence, but we are more than certain that if for some reason or another the process is disturbed, you will notice very soon.
But how did publicly organized and regulated waste management come to be and formed an integral part of our society? Well, the answer is that it originated in the United Kingdom at the time of the Industrial Revolution. This should not be surprising at all, because that was exactly the age when the modern day world was shaped and most of the things we perceive as a given in our lives were first conceived.
Alongside the increasing industrialization in England, the amount of waste that had been accumulated on the streets of the growing cities and around the factories became overwhelming. The aesthetic results were the least of our problems back them, because without junk removals all the rubbish started causing serious health hazards which had the potential of destroying everything that was achieved at that time.
There were no waste clearance regulations of any kind and as a result the streets of London, Manchester and Liverpool, along with the smaller towns throughout the kingdom were choked with garbage. It was in 1751 when people decided that they have had enough. It was Corbyn Morris from London who said that “as the preservation of the health of the people is of great importance, it is proposed that the cleaning of this city, should be put under one uniform public management, and all the filth be…conveyed by the Thames to proper distance in the country”.
The Public Health Act came in the 1850s and many refer to it as the origin of organized waste management in Britain, but according to recent studies cleaning parties were organized by the authorities at least half a century earlier, in the second half of the 18th century, mainly in London.
As we have already said the effects on the health of the general population was what made the people in Parliament and other local authorities to start thinking about proper waste management. The direct cause for the Public Health Act was the cholera epidemic which swept through London for a number of years around 1854. Once it was realized how important for the containing of such outbreaks waste management was, the course was set not only for the establishment of the regular waste clearance and junk removal service in the capital and the major cities throughout the country, but for ever increasing of the quality of the same service. Very soon other big cities around the world started following London’s example – those included New York in 1895, and all the rest of the European and North American capitals and big settlements.