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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
A fascinating look at recycling in the age of globalization.
There are a couple of things about this book that make it stand out - one is that the author's family ran a scrapyard, so he begins with a strong background in all the fiddly details of the value of various kinds of scrap, like the hundreds of different types of plastic wrapped electrical wire and what their value is, as well as the general ins and outs of how scrap dealing works. This also means he comes at the subject matter from a perspective that is inclined to challenge our sense of junkyards and the reuse industry as overly dangerous, dirty and polluted (though he concedes that parts of it are all those things), and to point out that even with the environmental downsides to a lot of our reuse processes, when compared to the environmental impact of strip-mining for raw materials the trade-offs can seem worthwhile.
Another is that he travels around the world following the threads of the now very international recycling trade, from the first car crushers in the central US to junkyards, to waste management buildings where various plastics are separated by Rube Goldberg-esque systems of flowing water, to airplane hanger-sized buildings in China where women and children fish through piles of wire and separate them, to second-hand electronics malls in China where computer chips are re-sold, to southeast China where shoeless, mask-less workers burn plastic and use toxic solvents to retrieve the more valuable components of various scrap.
He comes across as pretty forthright and honest in telling the story of what he sees, particularly in the areas of China where workers seem woefully unprotected. Its also apparent that he comes at it from the perspective of seeing the scrap industry as a net positive, despite its flaws, which was a useful one to consider.
Another is that he travels around the world following the threads of the now very international recycling trade, from the first car crushers in the central US to junkyards, to waste management buildings where various plastics are separated by Rube Goldberg-esque systems of flowing water, to airplane hanger-sized buildings in China where women and children fish through piles of wire and separate them, to second-hand electronics malls in China where computer chips are re-sold, to southeast China where shoeless, mask-less workers burn plastic and use toxic solvents to retrieve the more valuable components of various scrap.
He comes across as pretty forthright and honest in telling the story of what he sees, particularly in the areas of China where workers seem woefully unprotected. Its also apparent that he comes at it from the perspective of seeing the scrap industry as a net positive, despite its flaws, which was a useful one to consider.
I read one of Minter's other books, and while this was still interesting, I didn't find it as insightful. It had a lot of history I was unaware of, like the fact America had an abandoned car problem! I think Minter's personal ties to the scrap industry are good and bad here. He obviously has the inside look at everything, and his personal connections are invaluable and the only reason we can have this book in the first place. But I think it slightly gets in the way of objectivity at parts, particularly around discussing the environmental and health effects of stripping and repurposing our used electronics and plastics. I felt like the overarching problem was oversimplified a bit with a laissez-faire attitude, that well, these people would be worse off as farmers and our old stuff would be more harmful in a landfill. That's definitely true, but I thought it wasn't very deep in examining that there are things we could be doing to improve things even slightly. The overarching point, though, I agreed with. Minter's point that you need to be less concerned about where your recyclables are ending up and more concerned about how much you added is spot on. We like to consume, and we don't like to think about it or accept that the best thing is to consume less.
"Wonderfully readable" is about right. Factoids mixed in with anecdotes and setting-building - really enjoyed this look at the global economy driven by American (and other first-world) trash.
Really enjoyed this. I followed Minter's blog (and his wife's) when I lived in China and was fascinated by the subject matter -- you see junk recycling everywhere in China -- so it was really interesting to see a more fleshed out version of his work. This is the kind of reporting I like - clearly a lot of work went into it, Minter takes an esoteric subject and makes it comprehensible, and there are some personal touches that enhance the whole project. Well done.
informative
medium-paced
This was a wonderful example of someone making a subject interesting through their love of it. I never would have assumed that this would be such an entertaining read. Informative I expected but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I also really appreciated that the author is very upfront about his love of the scrapyard but also doesn't whitewash what happens to all that stuff we decide we no longer want. He even admits that he should reduce and reuse more often (as almost all of us frankly should) but gives a clear-eyed view of some of the repercussions of our "out of sight, out of mind" mentality when it comes to our waste
If you've ever wondered what happened to all that excess junk we throw away in the course of our lives, then this book will be illuminating. The author is a journalist who is intimately connected to junkyard recycling practices as his family used to own a scrapyard, and he has also lived in and traveled throughout China to expose the ways in which the first world countries' junks and trashes are recycled and reused for the citizens of the developing countries.
Minter exposes the extent of the items being thrown out and recycled as well as the cost (materially and environmentally), and it doesn't paint a pretty portrait of sustainability. Still, in the many instances of Minter's self-interest coupled with environmental awareness that we can glimpse throughout the book, he insists that the good of recycling the junk outweighs the bad, even if it ultimately proves detrimental to the environment and exploited workers' health. For example, this entire paragraph is just mind-boggling to me:
Minter exposes the extent of the items being thrown out and recycled as well as the cost (materially and environmentally), and it doesn't paint a pretty portrait of sustainability. Still, in the many instances of Minter's self-interest coupled with environmental awareness that we can glimpse throughout the book, he insists that the good of recycling the junk outweighs the bad, even if it ultimately proves detrimental to the environment and exploited workers' health. For example, this entire paragraph is just mind-boggling to me:
It's amazing to me that anybody could last more than eight minutes at this kind of work [sorting usable scrap item from trash], much less eight hours, and do it for $100 per month, plus room and board. But spread out before me are 150 women who seem to think it is worth it. Nobody's forced them to come here; they could've stayed home, wherever that might be.
Yikes. Due to his proximity to the scrapyard business, Minter tends to have a more rose-tinted view of the industry, and so his objectivity seems to be compromised because there are other examples of the above paragraph that makes me feel like he's trying to justify the bad industry practices just because it's a better alternative for these underpaid workers to work under awful safety & health conditions compared to them making less money working in agriculture.
To be fair, the book is informative, even if it's biased in the scrapyard business's favor. Plus, Minter stresses that the whole business wouldn't have come about if it wasn't for our increasing trend of excessive consumption without reflection. This quote is particularly apt:
Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn't mean you've recycled anything, and it doesn't make you a better, greener person: it just means you've outsourced your problem. [...] Fortunately, if that realization leaves you feeling bad, there's always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place.
(Of course, he then unintentionally backtracked the above point by saying that "oh, my wife and I don't recycle at home, instead we give your recyclable junk to our beloved housekeeper for her to recycle and get some bonus money that way", like dude you are literally outsourcing your problem too like...? Ngl, I had very conflicted feelings when I was reading this book, and sometimes the back-and-forth was enough to give me whiplash.)
But despite my qualms and the whiplash I've experienced, the main takeaway from this book was worth it, and can be succinctly concluded as the following:
(a) Reduce by avoiding buying things you don't need. This is the most important step; if we reduce our consumption, there'd be less junk in the world when there's less demand for the junks in the first place
(b) Reuse the things you do have rather than buying new things just because it's the "in" thing
(c) Recycle last when you can't reduce and reuse
Rating: 3.5 (Very informative but also pretty biased, also a bit too lengthy and could've been cut down by like 80 pages)
challenging
informative
medium-paced