Garbage Land: On The Secret Trail Of Trash (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
I picked this book up because I thought it sounded fun. What happens to our trash? How is it ultimately disposed of? What are the plans for digging our way out of our filth in the future? I have a “Wall-E” complex when it comes to envisioning an apocalyptic ending to our time on this planet as a result of our poor waste management. “Don’t sh*t where you eat” is starting to sound like the words of some ancient prophet who has foreseen our wicked ways. “Be sure your sh*t will find you out.” And, no, not all of us will have to face the error of our ways in our lifetime, but someone will one day, and it may be sooner than we think. For centuries cities have been built on the refuse of yesteryear, but in no other time has the trash grown as exponentially per capita as it has grown in recent years. For a bird’s-eye view, check out the artwork of Chris Jordan at chrisjordan.com. Look, we have trash mountains 30 stories high. Old landfills that have been closed for years will be leaking 200 lbs a day of contaminating leachate into the ground and releasing noxious gases into the air for many, many years to come. Uh. That’s not cool. So, this book was written in 2005. Already a little out of date, but the history of trash is still there, and I’ve learned some of the basics of potential solutions that hopefully are more advanced by now. The author has some fun describing, even making a joke of, the idiosyncrasies of the personalities and folk-culture of waste management laborers. The book swells, almost disagreeably so, with the author’s persnickety, though often humorous, cataloguing of waste-workers’ mannerisms, dress, facial features, and daily routines. Mixed-in evenly was an equally punctilious explanation of how local, national, and global efforts at waste removal and recycling has been coming along. It was exhausting. Half-page litanies of chemicals and contaminants littered the book through, and the sludging stats kept backing-up until I almost called a proof-plumber to get the story flowing again.I truly liked it at first, and was learning a lot, but Royte is, pardon the pun, a party-pooper when it comes to writing. Okay, that was too far. Royte is truly a creative writer, and I had fun reading for a while, but she tries to plunge too much material at one time through the ole brain-pipes. Sad, but true. The pages grew longer and longer with the telling of the story, and I ended up skimming the last third of the book.
I'm going to have some reflection on where all this stuff really goes before I throw away. I think one of two thing will happen while you read through this book:1. You're going to feel slightly vindicated as you don't recycle2. You're going to fee slightly disappointed as you do recycleRecycling I guess is a good thing. Royte makes it sound as if paper and metal are the only things worth recycling. Plastic has too many variations which cannot be mixed; and requires further energy to melt into some conglomerate. Glass is actually crushed back into a fine sand to be used as a layer in landfills. People in the business of recycling claim plastic to be too much of a waste of time to make any profit. Leaving the first two R's: Reduce and Reuse the real obligations that will make a difference.To make any kind of long standing noticeable impact on landfills is going to require a lifestyle change that nobody in America is anywhere near ready to deal with. Everything has to be new, it's cheaper to buy new than to fix, and sanitization/packaging are all part of the marketing ploy. Imagine if in the US we took up a practice like they have in Germany...Re-sterilizing containers and reusing them as they are. Would recycled containers with double or triple the labor cost more than new containers? It's going to take a lot more than a handfull of people going poop in their backyard and taking their pedally bikes to the grocery to fill up burlap reuseable sacks. It goes all the way back to manufacturing, distribution, and packaging, then acceptance by the public before the dinky recycling at home has any impact. For all I know we could have more then enough landfill space to use in the foreseeable future. However, I remain curious as to my impact on the landfills...and where does all of my trash and drainwater go in the end. As others have said, lots of personal observations having more to do with the people and oddities of Royte's journey. But I think enough is still here to get you really thinking about some things.
What do You think about Garbage Land: On The Secret Trail Of Trash (2006)?
I have been told to read this book for months and months. Finally got around to it, and I am so glad I did. Garbage Land is a completely accessible, extremely well written contemporary history of the garbage industry, with chapters on landfills, composting, glass recycling, plastics (called 'the devil's resin'), etc. I learned so much from reading this book. It includes great ideas for future sustainability, like making manufacturers responsible for disposing of the materials their goods come in (like plastic bottles or toxic computer parts), and building gardens on the roofs of city apartment buildings to cool the buildings and provide a home for 'putrescibles', i.e. compost. Who knew garbage could be so enthralling?Here is a great sum-up quote from this book:Our trash cans, I believe, ought to make us think: not about holes in the ground and barrels of oil saved by recycling, but about the enormous amount of material and energy that goes into the stuff we use for an instant and then discard. Garbage should worry us. It should prod us. We don't need better ways to get rid of things. We need to not get rid of things, either by keeping them cycling through the system or not designing and desiring them in the first place.
—Oriana
i learned a lot--i had some cynical suspicions confirmed but i also learned to see some things from a different perspective. some things made me feel secure about how i do certain things, others made me feel like i could do better (when can i get a composting toilet installed?? and a gray water system? i'd love to have a couple of "ponds" in my garden!). i definitely think manufacturers can do better and should be held accountable. i feel much less complacent now and i'm definitely tuned in to watch the revolution unfold. because i don't want this to come true: "In the end, garbage will win."Elizabeth Royte seems like a fun and creative lady, but i wish she hadn't described every trash or recycling or sewage machine in such excruciating detail. and my feeble brain is a bit deficient in numbers-processing, so my eyes glazed over with every passage that was chock full of data, statistics, or any kind of measurement.despite those personal problems, i think this is a really important book that everyone should read, regardless of their stance on consumption and/or recycling. i don't usually do this, but i've dog-eared a lot of pages and plan to go back to do some underlining and marking up. this is definitely a book to interact with.
—Marieke
This is a very dense book that appears to cover every possible aspect of garbage disposal and recycling in New York in particular and California and other states in general. Its quite interesting and very worthy and ... ultimately meaningless as a statistic towards the end reveals that only 2% of all garbage is household waste. The rest of it is industrial, primarily manufacturing and commercial, mostly restaurants and fast food outlets. One of the quite shocking (if you imagine this planet weighed down with detritus) figures is that for every 100 pounds of manufactured goods, 3,200 pounds of waste are generated.Elizabeth Royte quotes from a paper by Samantha McBride of NYU's Dept. of Sociology on consumer recycing. 'Such programs', she wrote, redirect 'the focus of environmental concern away from the material unsustainability of the current economic system, instead turning it inward on the self'. As long as we insist on living in an economy that revolves around forever researching, developing, manufacturing, selling, purchasing, using and discarding goods in favour of the Next New Thing, the focus on trash will be how to deal with it. We really should be concentrating on how not to make so much of it in the first place. But we won't, we're too addicted to 'new'. The thought of an economy that does not depend on consumerism would be considered anti-patriotic by Americans and, in any case, be unworkable in any present Western society.So what to do? Buy a bag that says Green on it, divide up the garbage and feel satisfied that you are doing your bit for the planet and forget the other 98% that nullifies your efforts. Blinkers.
—Petra X
