[1][2] He was the longtime director of the Tucson Garbage Project, which studied trends in discards by field research in Tucson, Arizona, and in landfills elsewhere,[3] pioneering the field now known as garbology.
His academic interests have been archaeology, early civilizations, modern material culture studies, and Mesoamerica.
With his students at the University of Arizona, Rathje began Le Projet du Garbàge in 1973, sorting waste at Tucson's landfill.
[4] He received the 1990 Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for "his innovative contributions to public understanding of science and its societal impacts by demonstrating with his creative 'Garbage Project' how the scientific method can document problems and identify solutions.
"[5] Except for several years in the early 2000s, during his tenure at Stanford, Rathje lived in Tucson, Arizona.