Garbage in the Garden State is the only book to examine the history of waste management in New Jersey. The state has played a pioneering role in the overall trajectory of waste management in the US. Howell's book is unique in the way that it places the contemporary challenges of waste management into their proper historical context – for instance, why does the system for recycling seem to work so poorly? Why do we have so many landfills in New Jersey, but also simultaneously not enough landfills or incinerators? 

Howell acknowledges that New Jersey is sometimes imagined, particularly by non-New Jerseyans, as a giant garbage dump for New York and Philadelphia. But every place has had to struggle with the challenges of waste management. New Jersey's trash history is in fact more interesting and more important than most. New Jersey’s waste history includes intensive planning, deep-seated political conflict, organized crime, and literally every level of state and federal judiciary. It is a colorful history, to say the least, and one that includes a number of firsts with regard to recycling, comprehensive planning, and the challenging economics of trash.