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    Garbology is the study of trash. This is why students love it

    A professor lends worms to students, takes them to sewage processing plants and encourages them to answer their own questions about garbage. Sometimes, they even make a career out of it.
    by Claire Murashima Mar 22, 2023 3 minutes
    Professor Stephanie Hughes and students categorizing various types of waste in January 2020.

    What makes humans different from other species? To environmental engineer and Santa Clara University professor Stephanie Hughes, it's the fact that we produce things that can't be used again in nature. We break the cycle. Professor Hughes doesn't even like to use the word, "waste."

    "I'm not very pleased with that terminology because really, humans are the only ones that have waste streams," Hughes says. "In the rest of the world, this planet operates cyclically: waste from one animal becomes nutrients

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