This story was originally published in Newsday on March 23, 1997. EXACTLY 10 YEARS AGO yesterday, a tugboat named the Break of Dawn left New York Harbor, towing a barge full of Long Island trash.

Jonah Winter’s book helps kids get a grip on what we toss out instead of recycling. He tells a fictional version of a real story that occurred in 1987, when a town on New York’s Long Island had no ...

So in 1987, something convinced many U.S. cities to pick up recyclable items from residents' homes. Sarah Gonzalez with our Planet Money podcast reports it started with a garbage barge and the Mob.

This week marks 30 years since the Long Island garbage barge put a spotlight on the problem of solid waste disposal. The barge set sail from Islip in 1987 in an effort to dump 3,100 tons of trash to a ...