Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
By Alexander Clapp
Recommended by Alex in Brattleboro, VT, Dave in Brookline, MA, Bob in Naples, FL, Patricia in Cincinnati, OH and Amanda in Viroqua, WI:
“Blow by blow, year by year... exposing the global waste transport, illegal dumping, and shady deals that keep low-income countries not only poor but contaminated.”
“Shines a bright light on the historical and cultural context of "waste" on a global scale. Well researched through personal visits to places that illustrate the consequences - particularly for people in the Global South - of shipping our "waste" - plastic, electronics, you name it - "abroad." Clapp makes clear that there is no "away" for the toxic objects we'd just as soon ignore or pretend that somehow we're benefiting those who receive them. A needed collective wake-up call to action!”
“This book details how countries with the wealth take advantage of third world countries revealing how money takes care of our unwanted trash.”
"This book covers the history of developed countries dumping all sorts of trash, chemicals, plastics, etc. on countries in the global south. It opened my eyes to the interconnectivity of the problem we currently have with dumping plastics with our longstanding dumping of toxic chemicals, electronics, etc. and the impact it has.”
”This book put the lifespan of trash into perspective. It does not just disappear once it is taken away by the garbage man - there is an entire waste industry. This book had me shaking my head in disbelief the whole time. It should be a must read for all humans.”
From the Publisher:
A globe-trotting work of relentless investigative reporting, this is the first major book to expose the catastrophic reality of the multi-billion-dollar global garbage trade.
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
Journalist Alexander Clapp spent two years roaming five continents to report deep inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, Tanzanian plastic pickers, whistle-blowing environmentalists throughout the jungles of Guatemala, and a community of Ghanaian boys who burn Western cellphones and televisions for cents an hour, to tell readers what he has figured out: While some trash gets tossed onto roadsides or buried underground, much of it actually lives a secret hot potato second life, getting shipped, sold, re-sold, or smuggled from one country to another, often with devastating consequences for the poorest nations of the world.
Waste Wars is a jaw-dropping exposé of how and why, for the last forty years, our garbage — the stuff we deem so worthless we think nothing of throwing it away — has spawned a massive, globe-spanning, multi-billion-dollar economy, one that offloads our consumption footprints onto distant continents, pristine landscapes, and unsuspecting populations. If the handling of our trash reveals deeper truths about our Western society, what does the globalized business of garbage say about our world today? And what does it say about us?