Garbage Land
Out of sight, out of mind... Into our trash cans go dead batteries, dirty diapers, bygone burritos, broken toys, tattered socks, eight-track cassettes, scratched CDs, banana peels.... But where do these things go next? In a country that consumes and then casts off more and more, what actually happens to the things we throw away? In Garbage Land, acclaimed science writer Elizabeth Royte leads us on the wild adventure that begins once our trash hits the bottom of the can. Along the way, we meet an odor chemist who explains why trash smells so bad; garbage fairies and recycling gurus; neighbors of massive waste dumps; CEOs making fortunes by encouraging waste or encouraging recycling-often both at the same time; scientists trying to revive our most polluted places; fertilizer fanatics and adventurers who kayak amid sewage; paper people, steel people, aluminum people, plastic people, and even a guy who swears by recycling human waste. With a wink and a nod and a tightly clasped nose, Royte takes us on a bizarre cultural tour through slime, stench, and heat-in other words, through the back end of our ever-more supersized lifestyles. By showing us what happens to the things we've "disposed of," Royte reminds us that our decisions about consumption and waste have a very real impact-and that unless we undertake radical change, the garbage we create will always be with us: in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we consume.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2017–2019years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- For anybody interested in the totality of their garbage output, I can't recommend this book enough:
https://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Land-Secret-Trail-Trash/dp/03...?
I had my book club read this book, and so many times, for so many other books this books came up in conversation.
Interesting facts:
* Glass is recycled in order to grind it up and spread it over landfills to keep down dust. In this way the glass is counted as recycled and not garbage despite it ended up being in the dump.
* Roman era landfills are still leaking effluant.
* Plastics might be marked and marketed as recyclable but many plastics are better off as garbage. Better yet, never created and used in the first place.
* Whenever a natural compost toilet has a problem, more sawdust is almost always the answer to fixing whatever ails it. (Not really in the book, one of our bookclub members had hippie parents).
I would follow up this book with another set in Mumbai:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400067553/ref=as_li_ss_tl
Somehow we need to do a better job at reducing poverty and imroving consumer recycling habits. No miracle solutions in this book. Just griding, abject poverty, living in the garbage of Mumbai.
- Yes, but that's a different kettle of fish.
I'm reading Garbage Land at the moment and she mentions that garbage collectors have an incredibly dangerous job, more dangerous than policemen or firemen, for example.
They're risking their lives to do a necessary job, and in that case I see no problem with the early retirement.
