September 8th, 2026 6:00 - 7:30 EDT The New York Society for Ethical Culture Ceremonial Hall

2 West 64 Street, Manhattan

“Trash!” has been compared to “Kitchen Confidential” (2000), Anthony Bourdain’s restaurant kitchen exposé. Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it’s accurate. - The New York Times

“Trash! A Garbageman’s Story,” a sparkling little gem of a book about the lives of men who wallow in a city’s muck and “scrub clean the stains of our consumer society.” - The Wall Street Journal

On September 8, 2026, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. EDT, the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board will host a book talk in the Ceremonial Hall of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The event will feature Simon Paré-Poupart, author of the acclaimed Trash: A Garbage Man's Story, in conversation with Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation since 2006 and author of Picking Up.

Trash has been described as a fascinating, no-bullshit account of two decades in the waste industry, offering a vivid portrait of the heroic labor, anarchic spirit, and often violent conditions experienced by the people who keep our cities clean.

Paré-Poupart began working as a garbageman to pay for school. After earning graduate degrees, he pursued careers in more "respectable" professions, yet ultimately found himself back on the truck—drawn by the physical intensity of the work, the camaraderie of his rough-and-tumble colleagues, and a sense of honesty and freedom that no other job had provided.

Robin Nagle's Picking Up is an ethnography of New York City's Department of Sanitation based on more than a decade of work with the Department, including time serving as a uniformed sanitation worker. In addition to her role with DSNY, Nagle is a Clinical Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies in New York University's School of Liberal Studies. She describes her scholarship as part of the emerging interdisciplinary field of discard studies.

The September 8 event promises a lively conversation between two authors who approach waste management from remarkably similar yet distinctly different perspectives. Their discussion will explore not only the realities of sanitation work, but also the broader cultural, social, and human dimensions of the systems that keep our cities functioning every day.