Education
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, pioneering the field now known as garbology. Rathje received his Doctor of Philosophy in anthropology from Harvard University in 1971.
Career
He was professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Arizona, with a joint appointment with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, and was consulting professor of anthropological sciences at Stanford University. His academic interests have been archaeology, early civilizations, modern material culture studies, and Mesoamerica. He first became known as director of the National Geographic-sponsored Cozumel Archaeological Project (Harvard/U of Arizona: February–June 1973) --which established Cozumel"s significance as an Olmec and Mayan port of trade.
With his students at the University of Arizona, Rathje began Le Projet du Garbàge in 1973, sorting waste at Tucson"s landfill.
Early results showed that Tucson residents discarded 10 per cent of the food they purchased and that middle-income households wasted more food than the poor or wealthy. He was the grand-nephew of Frank C. Rathje.
Except for several years in the early 2000s, during his tenure at Stanford, Rathje lived in Tucson, Arizona.