Common Read 2015- 2016 Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash: Home

The Common Read is part of a series of first-year experiences designed to encourage students to make connections with each other and engage with the LIU Post campus community. The Common Read book is chosen by a committee comprised of faculty, administrators, staff, and students, and is part of the curriculum of College 101, a 13-week, one-credit course with an academic focus designed to assist first-year students in making the transition to college life. All incoming freshman will receive a copy of the book at orientation.

Each academic year, the Common Read committee chooses a work of fiction or non-fiction that:

• Addresses aspects of the human condition or experience in a way that encourages intellectual and emotional growth.
• Raises intercultural knowledge and tolerance by presenting a variety of cultural perspectives or contemporary social issues in a way that is accessible to a diverse population of readers.
• Contains content and/or themes that encourage critical thinking.
• Captures the imagination of first-year students and draws them into reading and self-reflection.
• Introduces students to academic expectations and provides a model of serious intellectual engagement.

The average American produces 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime and $50 billion in squandered riches are rolled to the curb each year. But our bins are just the starting point for a strange, impressive, mysterious, and costly journey that may also represent the greatest untapped opportunity of the century.

In Garbology, Edward Humes investigates trash—what’s in it; how much we pay for it; how we manage to create so much of it; and how some families, communities, and even nations are finding a way back from waste to discover a new kind of prosperity.

John Lutz, Chair of English, Committee Chair
Iftikhar Ahmad, Curriculum and Instruction
Patrick Aievoli, Media Arts
Margaret Boorstein, Chair of Earth and Environmental Studies
Alexis Cobb, Student
Michele Dornisch, Curriculum and Instruction
Abby Dress, Media Arts
Barbara Fowles, Chair of Media Arts
Stephanie Frobin, Student
Nancy Frye, Psychology
Mellissa Hinton, Assistant Library Dean, Director of Technical Services
Belinda Kremer, Director of the Writing Center
Deborah Lutz, English
Louis Pisha, Library - Reference
Eduardo Rivera, Library, Head of Reference
Kay Sato, Director of Hutton House
Lynne Schwartz, Director of Student Counseling
Marci Swede, Chair of Health Sciences
Antonia Tolomeo, Student
Abagail Van Vlerah, Dean of Students
Louisa Kramer-Vida, Chair of Special Education and Literacy
Shawn Welnak, Philosophy
Maria Zarycky, Library - Instructional Media Center