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An English reporter takes a long, unsettling look into “the secret world of waste and urgent search for a cleaner future.”
Anyone longing to live in the “old days” should read Wasteland. From vivid accounts of pre-sewer-system London to horrid tales of radioactive carelessness in the early Atomic Age, British reporter Oliver Franklin-Wallis makes one glad to live in the modern era, where our various wastes disappear without a thought, with a flush or the rumble of a garbage truck.
And therein lies the problem, really. By removing waste from sight, the modern waste economy has us believing that there isn’t a problem: that recycling is a cure-all, that fast-fashion clothes we donate are a boon to the less fortunate, that the overseers of waste from sewage systems to nuclear facilities have it all under control.
They don’t. And it’s many, many times worse in less-developed countries, where much of the rich world’s manufacturing and waste disposal happens. Mountains of donated clothing in Ghana, leather tanneries in India polluting the holy Ganges (the holy status of which can actually hurt cleanup efforts as some people believe it cannot be tainted), primitive and highly toxic e-waste recycling (Ghana, again), all signal that the world’s poor bear the waste burden of the rich.
But the news isn’t all bad, as the author travels the globe to find the do-gooders and solution-seekers among the muck: Historic sewer pioneers, modern gleaners, right-to-repair advocates, and dumpster-diving freegan “Compost John” Cossman who possesses both “the musky scent of a man unconcerned by hygiene or other people’s judgment” and “the uncanny magnetism of a prophet or the leader of a particularly unsanitary cult.”
While a host of policy and technical solutions bubble up in each chapter, the bottom line for almost all of the issues Franklin-Wallis explores is that we need to stop thoughtlessly consuming so much. Instead, make sure waste issues are in the public eye, so people understand there are no perfect fixes.
Most of all, Wasteland is a good read. Lively, eye-opening but entertaining — and thought-provoking in the best way.
