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ხვალამდე გაქრება:ნაგვის გასაიდუმლოებული ისტორია
ამერიკის შეერთებული შტატები არის ნაგვის წარმოების მიხედვით პირველი ქვეყანა. ყოველი ამერიკელი დღეში საშუალოდ 4.5 ფუნტ ნაგავს ყრის. მაგრამ ნაგავი ამავდროულად გლობალური პრობლემაც არის. საიდან გაჩნდა ამდენი ნაგავი მსოფლიოში და სად მიდის ის? ჟურნალისტი და კინორეჟისორი ჰედერ როჯერსი ამ კითხვებს პასუხობს თავისი ნაშრომით, სადაც მკითხველს მოგზაურობა უწევს საშინელ და უცნაურად მიმზიდველ ნაგვის სამყაროში.
ეს წიგნი მოგვითხრობს თუ როგორ ეპყრობიან ადამიანები ნაგავს 1800-იანი წლებიდან მოყოლებული დღემდე. როჯერსი ხაზს უსვამს კავშირს დღევანდელ ინდუსტრიულ წარმოებას, მომხმარებლის კულტურასა და ნაგვის გადამუშავებას შორის.
ეს წიგნი მოგვითხრობს თუ როგორ ეპყრობიან ადამიანები ნაგავს 1800-იანი წლებიდან მოყოლებული დღემდე. როჯერსი ხაზს უსვამს კავშირს დღევანდელ ინდუსტრიულ წარმოებას, მომხმარებლის კულტურასა და ნაგვის გადამუშავებას შორის.
177 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
72 people are currently reading
1547 people want to read
About the author
Heather Rogers
24 books8 followersHeather Rogers is a journalist and author. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and The Nation. Her first book, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, traces the history and politics of household rubbish in the United States. The book received the Editor’s Choice distinction from the New York Times Book Review, and Non-Fiction Choice from the Guardian (UK). Her documentary film, also titled Gone Tomorrow, screened in festivals around the globe. Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution, her latest book, takes a critical, on-the-ground look at popular market-based solutions to ecological destruction. Rogers has spoken internationally on the environmental effects of mass consumption and is a senior fellow at the progressive US think tank Demos. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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October 29, 2022
“Garbage is good for business”…
Preamble:
--Dream book.
--Last year, it was Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World that blew me away; this year belongs to this book. Both check all the boxes for me:
i) Topic = an issue that haunts me every day. Note: this book focuses on municipal waste (from consumption: households and beyond) rather than industrial waste (from production process), as the former is more relatable (i.e. the waste we directly create) and easier to research. However, the latter is apparently 70 times greater (mining/agriculture/manufacturing/petrochemicals production)! I wish an entire chapter was devoted to clarifying this big-picture context.
ii) Methodology = radical (uncover the roots) + materialist (real-world conditions) + systems-thinking (big picture structures) beneath the surface noise.
iii) Results = tremendous synthesis (what a bibliography!) to better understand the social forces and struggles (which are not over!) behind the issue.
--“Less is More” has the upper hand on accessibility + social imagination for alternatives. This book is more academic, while re-imagining alternatives requires working backwards to uncover paths not taken and ongoing struggles.
Highlights:
--Let us go through step-by-step the history of garbage (in the context of US capitalism), paying special attention to:
i) Underlying forces of capitalism: profit-seeking, market relations/commodification dominating other social relations; see Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails.
ii) Capitalism’s dynamism/volatility (boom/busts, “creative destruction”) esp. in relations to war.
iii) Capitalism’s contradictions: cancerous productivity from necessity of endless growth (for-profit), market externalities, disruptions to social/ecological reproduction and struggles for alternatives.
1) American Civil War: Manufactured Goods, Garbage and Sanitation:
--Prior to the Civil War, households used few manufactured goods. Thus, relatively limited materials meant the continued reliance on reduce/reuse.
--Industrialization and urbanization were occurring, thus the growing rural/urban split. However, there was still organic waste recycling between the two, where urban waste (still limited to mostly organic given lack of manufactured goods) was used by rural farmers as fertilizer (given its scarcity prior to artificial fertilizers).
…Soil fertility was a crucial topic for Classical political economists (ex. Ricardo’s falling rate of profit due to worsening land productivity increasing costs); Marx raised concern of the rural/urban split disrupting the recycling of waste (“metabolic rift” in eco-Marxism; during Marx’s time, English fields turned to using “guano” as fertilizer, i.e. seabird excrement from colonial islands):
--The Civil War was the first major “creative destruction” in our story:
i) Manufactured goods:
--Why is there the notion that war drives innovation? As usual, political economy (esp. capitalism) tends to be obscured.
--Consider: during peace-time, the anarchy of the market (i.e. individualist profit-seeking) may lack cooperation and long-term planning for social needs, where long-term risky ventures (i.e. Research and Development) are more vulnerable to being crushed by the market’s short-term competition. Infrastructure (cooperative; both physical and social) is neglected. Social crisis (esp. war) is the main exception where capitalists relent in allowing the capitalist state to shift from protecting capitalist markets (via police/courts/prisons/military) to systemically disrupting them (planned production/distribution, also with mass cooperation).
--Thus, the Civil War’s innovations in mass production/distribution transformed postwar social life. Manufactured goods entered households, thus the rise of the new inorganic waste of “garbage”. This also led to professional waste management.
--A parallel process was the rise of artificial fertilizers, which finally disconnected organic waste recycling (Marx’s rural/urban “metabolic rift” concern). Thus, the input of fertilizer became increasingly commodified (reliance on purchasing from market), rendering agriculture more capital-intensive. However, other industries still continued reusing waste and scavenging. Note: “commodities” by definition are produced solely for selling on the market (“exchange-value”) for profit (growth for capitalists' accumulation), rather than for direct use (“use-value”). This was central to Marx's critique of capitalism:
-source: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
-application to environmental crisis?: A Companion to Marx's Capital
ii) Disease, public health, and capitalism:
--As with many wars, disease was the unheralded killer. War and urbanization resulted in numerous cholera outbreaks, giving rise to the (urban bourgeois) mid-19th century Progressive reforms for public health/urban planning. Their bourgeois attitudes meant public health was framed as combatting moral decay rather than capitalism’s volatility/inequality; scientism and professionalism formed the sanitarian.
--A curiously-illustrative example was public health prohibitions of the poor raising swine to graze on trash (a form of “Commons”), as well as scavenging. The economic driver of urbanization also meant longer working hours and dispossession of land, limiting time for reuse/repairs, further commodifying life’s necessities.
--Germ theory triumphed in the late 19th century, with public health reforms focusing on targeted technical innovations (ex. vaccines, street cleaning for commercial streets) while staying out of the way of the capitalist engine (ex. continued garbage growth). A lasting split between “public health” vs. waste collection occurred, where the latter became the realm of “sanitation engineering”. Garbage became treated as a benign technical problem to disappear rather than a metabolic resource/sign of imbalance.
--At the start of the 20th century, dissident writers/architects/planners/economists (ex. Charlotte Perkins Gilman/Helen Stuart Campbell/Alice Constance Austin) promoted cooperative social relations (i.e. cooperative housekeeping/community kitchens, laundries/not-for-profit food services) to build community and end capitalism’s externalities (esp. unpaid reproductive labour, waste), which was directly contrary to the emerging Fordist mass manufacturing/single-family consumerism and conveniently swept away by the Red Scare.
...For the rest of the review (WWI/WWII, Cold War/"Globalization"), see the comments section below...
Preamble:
--Dream book.
--Last year, it was Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World that blew me away; this year belongs to this book. Both check all the boxes for me:
i) Topic = an issue that haunts me every day. Note: this book focuses on municipal waste (from consumption: households and beyond) rather than industrial waste (from production process), as the former is more relatable (i.e. the waste we directly create) and easier to research. However, the latter is apparently 70 times greater (mining/agriculture/manufacturing/petrochemicals production)! I wish an entire chapter was devoted to clarifying this big-picture context.
ii) Methodology = radical (uncover the roots) + materialist (real-world conditions) + systems-thinking (big picture structures) beneath the surface noise.
iii) Results = tremendous synthesis (what a bibliography!) to better understand the social forces and struggles (which are not over!) behind the issue.
--“Less is More” has the upper hand on accessibility + social imagination for alternatives. This book is more academic, while re-imagining alternatives requires working backwards to uncover paths not taken and ongoing struggles.
Highlights:
--Let us go through step-by-step the history of garbage (in the context of US capitalism), paying special attention to:
i) Underlying forces of capitalism: profit-seeking, market relations/commodification dominating other social relations; see Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails.
ii) Capitalism’s dynamism/volatility (boom/busts, “creative destruction”) esp. in relations to war.
iii) Capitalism’s contradictions: cancerous productivity from necessity of endless growth (for-profit), market externalities, disruptions to social/ecological reproduction and struggles for alternatives.
1) American Civil War: Manufactured Goods, Garbage and Sanitation:
--Prior to the Civil War, households used few manufactured goods. Thus, relatively limited materials meant the continued reliance on reduce/reuse.
--Industrialization and urbanization were occurring, thus the growing rural/urban split. However, there was still organic waste recycling between the two, where urban waste (still limited to mostly organic given lack of manufactured goods) was used by rural farmers as fertilizer (given its scarcity prior to artificial fertilizers).
…Soil fertility was a crucial topic for Classical political economists (ex. Ricardo’s falling rate of profit due to worsening land productivity increasing costs); Marx raised concern of the rural/urban split disrupting the recycling of waste (“metabolic rift” in eco-Marxism; during Marx’s time, English fields turned to using “guano” as fertilizer, i.e. seabird excrement from colonial islands):
Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres [concentration of production], and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil. […] Moreover, all progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility. […] Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker. [Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, Ch.15 section 10; emphases added]--Despite the continuation of organic waste recycling, early US settler colonialism neglected these soil maintenance practices due to the assumption of endless land to expand to, until crises occurred.
--The Civil War was the first major “creative destruction” in our story:
i) Manufactured goods:
--Why is there the notion that war drives innovation? As usual, political economy (esp. capitalism) tends to be obscured.
--Consider: during peace-time, the anarchy of the market (i.e. individualist profit-seeking) may lack cooperation and long-term planning for social needs, where long-term risky ventures (i.e. Research and Development) are more vulnerable to being crushed by the market’s short-term competition. Infrastructure (cooperative; both physical and social) is neglected. Social crisis (esp. war) is the main exception where capitalists relent in allowing the capitalist state to shift from protecting capitalist markets (via police/courts/prisons/military) to systemically disrupting them (planned production/distribution, also with mass cooperation).
--Thus, the Civil War’s innovations in mass production/distribution transformed postwar social life. Manufactured goods entered households, thus the rise of the new inorganic waste of “garbage”. This also led to professional waste management.
--A parallel process was the rise of artificial fertilizers, which finally disconnected organic waste recycling (Marx’s rural/urban “metabolic rift” concern). Thus, the input of fertilizer became increasingly commodified (reliance on purchasing from market), rendering agriculture more capital-intensive. However, other industries still continued reusing waste and scavenging. Note: “commodities” by definition are produced solely for selling on the market (“exchange-value”) for profit (growth for capitalists' accumulation), rather than for direct use (“use-value”). This was central to Marx's critique of capitalism:
-source: Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
-application to environmental crisis?: A Companion to Marx's Capital
ii) Disease, public health, and capitalism:
--As with many wars, disease was the unheralded killer. War and urbanization resulted in numerous cholera outbreaks, giving rise to the (urban bourgeois) mid-19th century Progressive reforms for public health/urban planning. Their bourgeois attitudes meant public health was framed as combatting moral decay rather than capitalism’s volatility/inequality; scientism and professionalism formed the sanitarian.
--A curiously-illustrative example was public health prohibitions of the poor raising swine to graze on trash (a form of “Commons”), as well as scavenging. The economic driver of urbanization also meant longer working hours and dispossession of land, limiting time for reuse/repairs, further commodifying life’s necessities.
--Germ theory triumphed in the late 19th century, with public health reforms focusing on targeted technical innovations (ex. vaccines, street cleaning for commercial streets) while staying out of the way of the capitalist engine (ex. continued garbage growth). A lasting split between “public health” vs. waste collection occurred, where the latter became the realm of “sanitation engineering”. Garbage became treated as a benign technical problem to disappear rather than a metabolic resource/sign of imbalance.
However, these technocrats were far from neutral. The engineering profession, of which sanitation is but one subset, emerged to fulfill the demands of capital and evolved with business and industry as its most influential forces. Engineering skills and the uses for this specific field of knowledge were only cost-effective and necessary for big budget projects like bridge, canal and railroad construction, which were the exclusive domain of industry and government. Not surprisingly, powerful industrialists and businessmen held unrivaled sway over the field of engineering, and through this influence, they imbued garbage handling with their worldview on waste. [Emphasis added]--Alternatives: Feminist reformers:
--At the start of the 20th century, dissident writers/architects/planners/economists (ex. Charlotte Perkins Gilman/Helen Stuart Campbell/Alice Constance Austin) promoted cooperative social relations (i.e. cooperative housekeeping/community kitchens, laundries/not-for-profit food services) to build community and end capitalism’s externalities (esp. unpaid reproductive labour, waste), which was directly contrary to the emerging Fordist mass manufacturing/single-family consumerism and conveniently swept away by the Red Scare.
...For the rest of the review (WWI/WWII, Cold War/"Globalization"), see the comments section below...
October 16, 2014
What happened to cooperative kitchens?
When was fixing things deemed unpatriotic?
Why can't we return our empties?
How did the plastics industry appropriate the last word in a grassroots chant at the first Earth Day and thus convince all of us that the endless production of packaging is normal because it can be recycled (but it's not)?
Why was salvaging in the dump banned?
Who drove the mob out of the garbage business?
How much of our purchase price is packaging?
Why are most landfills only guaranteed to work for 50 years?
How did Keep America Beautiful invent littering as a concept and perpetrate an act of greenwashing by reducing all stewardship to that?
Why do we pee in our drinking water?
Is our age's art chiefly product design and propaganda?
AND SO FORTH.
When was fixing things deemed unpatriotic?
Why can't we return our empties?
How did the plastics industry appropriate the last word in a grassroots chant at the first Earth Day and thus convince all of us that the endless production of packaging is normal because it can be recycled (but it's not)?
Why was salvaging in the dump banned?
Who drove the mob out of the garbage business?
How much of our purchase price is packaging?
Why are most landfills only guaranteed to work for 50 years?
How did Keep America Beautiful invent littering as a concept and perpetrate an act of greenwashing by reducing all stewardship to that?
Why do we pee in our drinking water?
Is our age's art chiefly product design and propaganda?
AND SO FORTH.
June 29, 2021
Although I didn't overly enjoy reading this book, it does discuss some interesting zero waste and green initiatives, highlighting the problems with cooperate green washing. However, these topics are only discussed breifly in the last chapter or so, and the rest or the book is dedicated to the history of rubbish. I perhaps misinterpreted the title, but by the middle of the book I would have expected the discussion to move on from waste disposal of the 1930s. I also found the structure of the book a little hectic, with the frequent subheadings breaking the flow of the chapters.
May 26, 2013
This book was pretty informative on a topic I didn't know much about.
For me, the beginning few chapters were interesting but not particularly revelatory. However later on in the book--the chapters "Spaceship Earth," "Recycling," and "The Corporatization of Garbage"--were really engrossing for me. I have notes from almost every page. Basically there is a conspiracy (like, these people actually do openly contrive and scheme and lobby and finagle) to generate trash and it's pretty apalling.
Heather Rogers isn't a bad writer--I didn't feel this book was dry or boring by any means--but I did feel it could have been put together more solidly. For example, she uses somewhat sensational language, which I believe is justified, but she doesn't rigorously document the particulars of WHY she uses it, making it seem somewhat alarmist at first. When she does document really awful things--thousands of smog deaths, for example--it seems like they're almost afterthoughts. If it were my book, I would have led with the horrific & well-documented ill-effects of garbage, as a sort of introductory "hey this is why you should care about this issue," rather than just putting them in seemingly at random. Similarly, there was a Karl Marx reference or two that seemed out of place. Unfortunately I don't really know much about Marx(ism), so maybe it really was relevant, but it didn't seem that way to me.
This book covers a lot of ground, but as the author admits, it's about municipal garbage, which in the US accounts for only 1 out of every 70 tons of waste produced, as opposed to industrial waste. So it's really just the tip of the iceberg. I think it's still really important to read it though. She doesn't try to make the reader feel bad about their household trash as you might suspect, either--the whole "the individual is solely responsible for their trash" is exposed as a cunningly crafted campaign carried out by the packaging industry.
Overall a super decent book, I take away one star because it could have been smoother & laid out a better argument in the beginning, and also because I found my attention wandering at times (although I can't really blame the book for that--I've had a lot on my plate lately).
For me, the beginning few chapters were interesting but not particularly revelatory. However later on in the book--the chapters "Spaceship Earth," "Recycling," and "The Corporatization of Garbage"--were really engrossing for me. I have notes from almost every page. Basically there is a conspiracy (like, these people actually do openly contrive and scheme and lobby and finagle) to generate trash and it's pretty apalling.
Heather Rogers isn't a bad writer--I didn't feel this book was dry or boring by any means--but I did feel it could have been put together more solidly. For example, she uses somewhat sensational language, which I believe is justified, but she doesn't rigorously document the particulars of WHY she uses it, making it seem somewhat alarmist at first. When she does document really awful things--thousands of smog deaths, for example--it seems like they're almost afterthoughts. If it were my book, I would have led with the horrific & well-documented ill-effects of garbage, as a sort of introductory "hey this is why you should care about this issue," rather than just putting them in seemingly at random. Similarly, there was a Karl Marx reference or two that seemed out of place. Unfortunately I don't really know much about Marx(ism), so maybe it really was relevant, but it didn't seem that way to me.
This book covers a lot of ground, but as the author admits, it's about municipal garbage, which in the US accounts for only 1 out of every 70 tons of waste produced, as opposed to industrial waste. So it's really just the tip of the iceberg. I think it's still really important to read it though. She doesn't try to make the reader feel bad about their household trash as you might suspect, either--the whole "the individual is solely responsible for their trash" is exposed as a cunningly crafted campaign carried out by the packaging industry.
Overall a super decent book, I take away one star because it could have been smoother & laid out a better argument in the beginning, and also because I found my attention wandering at times (although I can't really blame the book for that--I've had a lot on my plate lately).
May 27, 2016
ინფორმატიული წიგნი ძალიან საჭირო საკითხზე.
მოცემული ისტორია ამერიკას მოიცავს ძირითადად, ევროპის რამდენმე ქვეყანაცაა მოყვანილი ალტერნატიული გამოსავლის მაგალითებად. მიუხედავად ამისა, არარელევანტური არაა ნამდვილად ჩვენთვის - ცუდ მაგალითზე კარგად შეგვიძლია ვისწავლოთ, სურვილი თუ აქვს ვინმეს.
მიუხედავად იმისა, რომ წიგნის 80% ფაქტების ციტირება და შეჯამებაა, უჩვეულოდ კარგად ���კითხება წიგნი და მე პირადად არ მომბეზრებია
მოცემული ისტორია ამერიკას მოიცავს ძირითადად, ევროპის რამდენმე ქვეყანაცაა მოყვანილი ალტერნატიული გამოსავლის მაგალითებად. მიუხედავად ამისა, არარელევანტური არაა ნამდვილად ჩვენთვის - ცუდ მაგალითზე კარგად შეგვიძლია ვისწავლოთ, სურვილი თუ აქვს ვინმეს.
მიუხედავად იმისა, რომ წიგნის 80% ფაქტების ციტირება და შეჯამებაა, უჩვეულოდ კარგად ���კითხება წიგნი და მე პირადად არ მომბეზრებია
November 6, 2022
Gone Tomorrow is a strident and conventional environmentalist screed against trash. In a kind of cosmological sense, the third law of thermodynamics is a harsh mistress, and every process produces some kind of waste as it runs down towards entropy. But 20th and 21st century American civilization is a particular kind of grotesquely wasteful, a life of single-user plastics which endure for millennia, electronics that obsolete themselves, bruised fruit, shoddy fast fashion, machines that are more expensive to fix than toss, and so on, all formed into a massive waste stream that gets picked up from bins behind our houses, and through a clever little social magic trick, seems to disappear.
Of course, this is just a trick. The garbage isn't really gone. Instead it's compressed and trucked off to be buried in a plastic lined pit in the ground, and we have to trust the corporations involved, like the massive Waste Management, and the thoroughly captured regulatory agencies like the EPA, that it won't be leaking toxic leachate into the ground in a few decades. Garbage is typically finally dumped in areas with large numbers of BIPOC residents, or these days sent off to the Global South. It's a real problem.
I think my issue with this book is that Rogers is gesturing at the idea that trash is just another logistics space plugged into our homes, but she's coming in with such a resolutely antagonistic attitude that she can't see how the system works, instead only seeing the corruption and the harms. This book has an extremely romantic attitude towards the pre-Progressive era system of 'gleaners' who'd rummage through the garbage stream to pull as much value out of it before the remains would get tossed in the nearest body of water, and modern equivalents in zero-waste communes.
There are some interesting historical facts in here about the rise of sanitation engineering as a profession, almost all of which appear to be pulled from Melosi's classic Garbage in the Cities, and while this book opens an interesting question to think about how the advantages of garbage have been privatized by manufacturers and shippers, while individuals and society bear the cost, it's hoary environmentalism hasn't held up.
Of course, this is just a trick. The garbage isn't really gone. Instead it's compressed and trucked off to be buried in a plastic lined pit in the ground, and we have to trust the corporations involved, like the massive Waste Management, and the thoroughly captured regulatory agencies like the EPA, that it won't be leaking toxic leachate into the ground in a few decades. Garbage is typically finally dumped in areas with large numbers of BIPOC residents, or these days sent off to the Global South. It's a real problem.
I think my issue with this book is that Rogers is gesturing at the idea that trash is just another logistics space plugged into our homes, but she's coming in with such a resolutely antagonistic attitude that she can't see how the system works, instead only seeing the corruption and the harms. This book has an extremely romantic attitude towards the pre-Progressive era system of 'gleaners' who'd rummage through the garbage stream to pull as much value out of it before the remains would get tossed in the nearest body of water, and modern equivalents in zero-waste communes.
There are some interesting historical facts in here about the rise of sanitation engineering as a profession, almost all of which appear to be pulled from Melosi's classic Garbage in the Cities, and while this book opens an interesting question to think about how the advantages of garbage have been privatized by manufacturers and shippers, while individuals and society bear the cost, it's hoary environmentalism hasn't held up.
June 20, 2020
Საკმაოდ საინტერესო წიგნი Სამრეწველო, საყოფაცხოვრებო და ინდუსტრიული ნარჩენების მიერ წარმოქმნილი საფრთხის შესახებ. Როგორ ოცვლებოდა სხვადასხვა დროს ამერიკის შეერთებულ შტატებში ნაგვის "მოვლის", გნებავთ, თავიდან მოშორების პოლიტიკა. Რომელიც საკმაოდ სარფიან ბიზნესადაა გადაქცეული.
"Გამოტუტვით მიღებული სითხეების გარდა, გახრწნილი ნაგავი "ნაგავსაყრელის გაზსაც" გამოყოფს. Ეს ორთქლი ადვილად აალებად მეთანს შეიცავს (რომელიც მსოფლიო კლიმატის ცვლილების ერთ-ერთი მთავარი მიზეზია).
Გარემოს დაცვის სააგენტოს მტკიცებით, მეთანი განსაკუთრებით სახიფათოა, რადგან ნახშირორჟანგზე 21-ჯერ უფრო ეფექტურად ამწყვდევს სითბოს ატმოსფეროში. Ნაგავსაყრელის გაზი შეიცავს, ასევე, საწმენდი საშუალებების, წებოს, პლასტმასის, საღებავების ორთქლს, მათ შორის ნახშირორჟანგს, ე.წ. HAP-ს ("ჰაერის სახიფათო დამაბინძურებლებს") და VOC-ს ("აქროლად ორგანულ ნაერთებს"). Გარემოს დაცვის სააგენტოს მტკიცებით, VOC წარმოშობს სმოგს - ოზონს მიწის დონეზე. Ოზონი აფერხებს მცენარეების ზრდას, აზიანებს ადამიანების სუნთქვის ორგანოებს.
HAP კი ავითარებს კიბოს, აღიზიანებს რესპირაციულ და ცენტრალურ ნერვულ სისტემას."
Წარმოებული ქაღალდის ნახევარი იყრება, რაც საკმაოდ დიდ ადგილს იკავებს ნაგავსაყრელებზე (50%-ს).
Დღესდღეობით, წარმოებული პლასტმასის მხოლოდ 5% გადამუშავდება, შუშის კონტეინერების 60%-65% და ალუმინის ქილების 50% კი უბრალოდ იყრება.
Მეოცე საუკუნის მანძილზე აშშ-ში რევოლუციური სისწრაფით იზრდებოდა ნაგვის მოცულობა - რამდენიმე 10-ეულჯერ.
Წარმატებული, ინდუსტრიულად განვითარებული საზოგადოება და ბიზნესი ნიშნავს ასეთსავე მასშტაბური ოდენობᲘს ნაგვის დაგროვებასაც.
"Გამოტუტვით მიღებული სითხეების გარდა, გახრწნილი ნაგავი "ნაგავსაყრელის გაზსაც" გამოყოფს. Ეს ორთქლი ადვილად აალებად მეთანს შეიცავს (რომელიც მსოფლიო კლიმატის ცვლილების ერთ-ერთი მთავარი მიზეზია).
Გარემოს დაცვის სააგენტოს მტკიცებით, მეთანი განსაკუთრებით სახიფათოა, რადგან ნახშირორჟანგზე 21-ჯერ უფრო ეფექტურად ამწყვდევს სითბოს ატმოსფეროში. Ნაგავსაყრელის გაზი შეიცავს, ასევე, საწმენდი საშუალებების, წებოს, პლასტმასის, საღებავების ორთქლს, მათ შორის ნახშირორჟანგს, ე.წ. HAP-ს ("ჰაერის სახიფათო დამაბინძურებლებს") და VOC-ს ("აქროლად ორგანულ ნაერთებს"). Გარემოს დაცვის სააგენტოს მტკიცებით, VOC წარმოშობს სმოგს - ოზონს მიწის დონეზე. Ოზონი აფერხებს მცენარეების ზრდას, აზიანებს ადამიანების სუნთქვის ორგანოებს.
HAP კი ავითარებს კიბოს, აღიზიანებს რესპირაციულ და ცენტრალურ ნერვულ სისტემას."
Წარმოებული ქაღალდის ნახევარი იყრება, რაც საკმაოდ დიდ ადგილს იკავებს ნაგავსაყრელებზე (50%-ს).
Დღესდღეობით, წარმოებული პლასტმასის მხოლოდ 5% გადამუშავდება, შუშის კონტეინერების 60%-65% და ალუმინის ქილების 50% კი უბრალოდ იყრება.
Მეოცე საუკუნის მანძილზე აშშ-ში რევოლუციური სისწრაფით იზრდებოდა ნაგვის მოცულობა - რამდენიმე 10-ეულჯერ.
Წარმატებული, ინდუსტრიულად განვითარებული საზოგადოება და ბიზნესი ნიშნავს ასეთსავე მასშტაბური ოდენობᲘს ნაგვის დაგროვებასაც.
January 22, 2012
This is an ambitious book about an important and pressing issue: the overwhelming problem of how to deal with our municipal garbage (and, perhaps more importantly, the consumer issues that lead us to having so many discards in the first place). But I have to think that the people who gave the book 4 stars and up are doing so because they believe in the cause and not because the story-telling is so well executed.
I struggled with the description of the modern landfill in the first chapter in part because I work for a company with a solid waste management division. The technical descriptions were a bit heavy on "air quotes" that made processes seem unnecessarily evil or inaccessible--a stronger writer would not have backed away from these topics.
Likewise I was not comfortable with the overly dramatic descriptions of the solitary and miserable work life of today's modern garbage worker ("...He sits intently, his body rigid as he opens the pincers wide and reels them down to clutch a snarl of bursting plastic garbage bags. Carefully but quickly the operator lures up then releases the tons of broken appliances, torn clothing and rotting food into one of the fuel channels that feed the fires. Just above the operator's right shoulder, two closed-circuit televisions beam faded, slightly distorted black-and-white images from cameras positioned in the mouths of the chutes. The grapple controller uses these to monitor the flow. On the small screens one can see the backdraft spitting up paper scraps and lightweight debris from the belly of the burner as the mounds of discards slowly, unceremoniously sinck into the flames..."). Uhm, yeah, I know the author is also a documentary film maker--this probably works better on screen.
I was most intrigued by the early chapters of the book that described the terrible conditions in New York and other early US cities before trash hauling and disposal systems were formalized (1800s). I had never really thought about what a city like that would look like (or smell like). It was interesting to learn about the wild pigs running in the streets and the trade in certain re-usable discards, including some items that we would never think about selling/trading now = feces, hides of dead animals, bones, rags. Only after sanitation problems contributed to communicable diseases that were affecting the city's rich was a real organized effort focused on cleaning up the streets initiated, and even then the campaign had a weird moral/religious component. I liked reading about the scandals and failures associated with early municipal waste contracts.
Also good (p.72): "Sanitation engineers rarely challenged the fundamental market system that pathologically wasted resources. Their acquiescence helped the American public accept growing quantities of garbage without contemplating its implications. Changing practices in the home reinforced this position; people were consuming more and throwing out escalating amounts while growing increasingly accustomed to having it whisked away by professionals. At this formative time, flush toilets, indoor plumbing, more consistent street cleaning and improved refuse disposal were all making the act of wasting easier both logistically and aesthetically." I think it is important for us to acknowledge that waste happens in a hidden/private zone now, and we can do it secretly, and because we don't see its consequences we are a less likely to change our actions...
About packaging - very good (p 116): "As mom-and-pop stores with their advice-giving sales clerks gave way to self-service chain supermarkets, the package because the producer's 'sole representative at the sales decision point.' Packaging which had previously been a subset of manurfacturing now became a subset of advertising, crucial to seizing the customer's attention and compelling buyer loyalty. And shoppers responded: good-looking packaging clearly enhanced the pleasure of consuming."
Further (p 117): "Individual shoppers paid for the increased expense of packaging, contained as it was within the price of the product, and were left to fund the management of wastes themselves. In that scenario, still true toda, the expense of packagin was externalized off the ledgers of industry and onto the bankbooks of consumers and taxpayers..."
Things we should be shocked about:
- "About 80 percent of US products are used once then discarded"
- "50 percent of all paper ends up as garbage (in fact paper accounts for fully half of all discards in US landfills)"
- "Only 5 percent of all plastic is recycled, while almost two-thirds of all glass containers and half of aluminum beverage containers get trashed."
- Interesting to me: The fact that resin/plastic makers adopted that now-familiar triangle/numbering system to stamp plastics to supposedly make it easier for consumers to identify what type of plastics they are using and thus make it easier to recycle them. But really the numbers are confusing, the stamp has the effect of implying that maybe some good can come of this plastic, or maybe it was already recycled, when actually none of that is really true...
Finally, this was interesting: "Even though over 70 tons of industrial debris from mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and petrochemical production are created for every ton of household discards, it is the slough of daily life that affects average people most directly because it is the waste we make."
Really? You're really saying that this whole book was just about the one vs the 70 tons???
Hmmm, then, who's writing about the other 70? I think I want to find that book.
I struggled with the description of the modern landfill in the first chapter in part because I work for a company with a solid waste management division. The technical descriptions were a bit heavy on "air quotes" that made processes seem unnecessarily evil or inaccessible--a stronger writer would not have backed away from these topics.
Likewise I was not comfortable with the overly dramatic descriptions of the solitary and miserable work life of today's modern garbage worker ("...He sits intently, his body rigid as he opens the pincers wide and reels them down to clutch a snarl of bursting plastic garbage bags. Carefully but quickly the operator lures up then releases the tons of broken appliances, torn clothing and rotting food into one of the fuel channels that feed the fires. Just above the operator's right shoulder, two closed-circuit televisions beam faded, slightly distorted black-and-white images from cameras positioned in the mouths of the chutes. The grapple controller uses these to monitor the flow. On the small screens one can see the backdraft spitting up paper scraps and lightweight debris from the belly of the burner as the mounds of discards slowly, unceremoniously sinck into the flames..."). Uhm, yeah, I know the author is also a documentary film maker--this probably works better on screen.
I was most intrigued by the early chapters of the book that described the terrible conditions in New York and other early US cities before trash hauling and disposal systems were formalized (1800s). I had never really thought about what a city like that would look like (or smell like). It was interesting to learn about the wild pigs running in the streets and the trade in certain re-usable discards, including some items that we would never think about selling/trading now = feces, hides of dead animals, bones, rags. Only after sanitation problems contributed to communicable diseases that were affecting the city's rich was a real organized effort focused on cleaning up the streets initiated, and even then the campaign had a weird moral/religious component. I liked reading about the scandals and failures associated with early municipal waste contracts.
Also good (p.72): "Sanitation engineers rarely challenged the fundamental market system that pathologically wasted resources. Their acquiescence helped the American public accept growing quantities of garbage without contemplating its implications. Changing practices in the home reinforced this position; people were consuming more and throwing out escalating amounts while growing increasingly accustomed to having it whisked away by professionals. At this formative time, flush toilets, indoor plumbing, more consistent street cleaning and improved refuse disposal were all making the act of wasting easier both logistically and aesthetically." I think it is important for us to acknowledge that waste happens in a hidden/private zone now, and we can do it secretly, and because we don't see its consequences we are a less likely to change our actions...
About packaging - very good (p 116): "As mom-and-pop stores with their advice-giving sales clerks gave way to self-service chain supermarkets, the package because the producer's 'sole representative at the sales decision point.' Packaging which had previously been a subset of manurfacturing now became a subset of advertising, crucial to seizing the customer's attention and compelling buyer loyalty. And shoppers responded: good-looking packaging clearly enhanced the pleasure of consuming."
Further (p 117): "Individual shoppers paid for the increased expense of packaging, contained as it was within the price of the product, and were left to fund the management of wastes themselves. In that scenario, still true toda, the expense of packagin was externalized off the ledgers of industry and onto the bankbooks of consumers and taxpayers..."
Things we should be shocked about:
- "About 80 percent of US products are used once then discarded"
- "50 percent of all paper ends up as garbage (in fact paper accounts for fully half of all discards in US landfills)"
- "Only 5 percent of all plastic is recycled, while almost two-thirds of all glass containers and half of aluminum beverage containers get trashed."
- Interesting to me: The fact that resin/plastic makers adopted that now-familiar triangle/numbering system to stamp plastics to supposedly make it easier for consumers to identify what type of plastics they are using and thus make it easier to recycle them. But really the numbers are confusing, the stamp has the effect of implying that maybe some good can come of this plastic, or maybe it was already recycled, when actually none of that is really true...
Finally, this was interesting: "Even though over 70 tons of industrial debris from mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and petrochemical production are created for every ton of household discards, it is the slough of daily life that affects average people most directly because it is the waste we make."
Really? You're really saying that this whole book was just about the one vs the 70 tons???
Hmmm, then, who's writing about the other 70? I think I want to find that book.
October 8, 2012
This well documented book addresses the absurdly tragic reality of our waste disposal system. The first half is dedicated to the history of garbage in the United States, which would only be interesting to someone interested histories of the mundane. The second half discusses more recent history leading into current practices, which are gripping in their grotesque destructiveness. The chapter on recycling is especially disturbing in its reversal of received wisdom.
It is published by the progressive New Press. So it is not surprising that there are passing references to Karl Marx. What is surprising is that Heather Rogers completely avoids imposing an overbearing, robotic 'dialectical' or class conflict analysis on her vast accumulation of information, which is not to say she leaves the facts to 'speak for themselves.'
Informative and perspective changing. I would give it five stars except for the sometimes excess of detail.
It is published by the progressive New Press. So it is not surprising that there are passing references to Karl Marx. What is surprising is that Heather Rogers completely avoids imposing an overbearing, robotic 'dialectical' or class conflict analysis on her vast accumulation of information, which is not to say she leaves the facts to 'speak for themselves.'
Informative and perspective changing. I would give it five stars except for the sometimes excess of detail.
September 5, 2008
My brother suggested I read this book after an email I sent to him bemoaning all the waste our home remodel was regenerating. It's not an engaging text by any means; I found it difficult to read and often had to force myself through a chapter at a time. The history of garbage disposal is an interesting topic - who knew our waste hauler, Waste Management Inc., was the largest hauler in the country? That much of what we so carefully sort and clean for recycling is, literally, trashed because the demand for said items is low and/or expense is high?
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone without the caveat "it's really boring". Still, it's made me more mindful of what I purchase, what portion of those purchases will end up in the trash, and whether or not it's worthwhile to purchase it in the first place.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone without the caveat "it's really boring". Still, it's made me more mindful of what I purchase, what portion of those purchases will end up in the trash, and whether or not it's worthwhile to purchase it in the first place.
September 25, 2008
a straight-forward, readable account of what happens to waste when it's disposed in america. rogers begins with some scary facts, and works backwards throughout the history of trash and clean-up for the past 200-ish years. it's not the most exciting book in the world, but it's clear and reasonable, and it makes a strong argument. i found the conclusion particularly useful, when rogers (following a chapter devoted to the ups-and-downs of recycling) makes several compelling suggestions for public policy in the future.
a quick(ish) informative read for anyone concerned about ecology, personal responsibility and government oversight.
a quick(ish) informative read for anyone concerned about ecology, personal responsibility and government oversight.
August 29, 2018
This book was highly educational and really enlightened me when it came to understanding how garbage and recycling really works throughout the U. S. This book would be great as required reading for students studying environmental science. However, as someone who picked this book up more for recreation, I did feel it was a little slow and repetitive in it's points.
May 23, 2016
Placeholder review
Placeholder review. Predictably depressing but an essential read nonetheless, this book is more than a Marxist screed telling you the depressing crap you already knew. Some copyediting errors mar an important look into detritus as a mirror.
Placeholder review. Predictably depressing but an essential read nonetheless, this book is more than a Marxist screed telling you the depressing crap you already knew. Some copyediting errors mar an important look into detritus as a mirror.
January 20, 2022
This is a well researched book that is also well written. It takes a look at how we became such a consumption based society that creates so much trash. However, as environmental engineer, I took serious offense at one chapter that basically blames sanitation engineers, as environmental engineers were previously known, for the creation of trash. The author's argument seems to be that if engineers weren't so good at what they do, in this case, dealing with trash that society has created, then society wouldn't create so much trash. An interesting argument. So if trash had just piled up in the street and never found a place to go, then society would have all of the sudden stopping creating trash? I am not absolving early sanitation engineers of blame in some of our current problems. Certainly their ideas so many decades ago to turn wetlands into landfills, which were really dumps, was a disastrous idea. We have learned so much about the need for liners and gas collectors from landfills that they didn't know then, but hindsight is 20/20. The author also demonizes some current ways of dealing with trash with either no proof of the ills alleged or with information from decades ago that does not apply anymore. [I say this even taking into account when this book was written.] The author's argument that society needs to stop producing so much trash is absolutely on the mark, but the argument somewhat gets lost with some of the demonizing of people finding solutions for the current reality.
March 9, 2020
It took me a long time to get through this, relative to it's length. Not that the topic matter wasn't exactly what I'd been hoping to find, but I guess I wasn't crazy about the writing all the time. Sometimes it lost me. BUT I pushed through because the information contained in this book is crucial to anyone, especially anyone who is truly ready to learn more about what happens to all the waste we produce. Or maybe I should say the opposite, especially for anyone who hasn't yet realized the damage that all that packaging and all those convenience objects that are cheap and quickly obsolete are doing. Think you're doing enough because you recycle? Think again. Think your waste is being managed responsibly, out of sight, mind and unable to affect you? Think again.
Read this book and start to THINK about this problem.
Read this book and start to THINK about this problem.
June 26, 2022
Book blatantly examines the science and economic factors involved behind trash. A raw account, but extremely informational overview of trash and recycling that sheds light on the issues and weaknesses in our integrated system. I was completely amazed by almost, each page I read through held crazy statistics and analytics on trash. It also noted all of the flaws a capital rich economy like the US holds through revealing facts whether the reader likes it or not. I'll close this review with a quote from the book. "If recycling doesn't bring in revenue it often risks getting cut from both private waste companies and municipal governments." In other words, money has a lot to do with this region, and some might say too much...
August 17, 2019
I thought this book was completely fascinating and I wholeheartedly disagree with those readers who found it lagging. I specifically found the politics of waste management to be incredibly interesting as I had no idea that so much lobbying occurred to both prevent waste reduction laws and to even actively encourage increased wasting. Reading this book really expanded my views of waste management and made me realize how insane and unsustainable our current system is.
August 8, 2019
ამ წიგნის კითხვა იმიტომ დავიწყე, რომ დიდი ხანია მინდა zero waste-ის ცხოვრების სტილზე გადასვლა. წიგნი რეალურად დამეხმარა ჩემ თავთან საკმარისი არგუმენტი მქონოდა ამ ნაბიჯის გადასადგმელად.
ნაგავი ყველას პრობლემაა და ყველამ ჩვენი წვლილი უნდა შევიტანოთ დედამიწის გასუფთავებაში.
ცოტა საშიშია როცა იაზრებ, რომ შენს ერთხელ გამოყენებულ საწრუპს შეუძლია ცოცხალი არსების სიცოცხლე იმსხვერპლოს...
ნაგავი ყველას პრობლემაა და ყველამ ჩვენი წვლილი უნდა შევიტანოთ დედამიწის გასუფთავებაში.
ცოტა საშიშია როცა იაზრებ, რომ შენს ერთხელ გამოყენებულ საწრუპს შეუძლია ცოცხალი არსების სიცოცხლე იმსხვერპლოს...
August 25, 2024
The author's message: 5 stars but this book, just 3 stars, not just because it's dated (2005.) I'm glad she included information about the bogus Keep America Beautiful program (which roped in this 1970s kid...) and the demise of the refillable glass bottle companies.
July 11, 2022
Fascinating socio-political history of waste handling in the most garbage producing country in the world.
February 4, 2023
A truly revelatory exposé on waste disposal in the US. A more recent version of this book is sorely needed for a new generation.
March 1, 2024
Bring back the hogs!!
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June 5, 2024I like books about garbage but this wasn’t my favorite one.
November 22, 2025
Had to read for school. Interesting but kind of read like a textbook
February 24, 2015
This was a very well-researched book on what happens to garbage and how it got to be this way, looking back at the history of waste collection in the United States. It's so upsetting to see how we went from having almost no waste (everything was seen as useful) to seeing everything around us as eventual trash. It was interesting to see the different methods of using discarded items, such as feeding slop to pigs, sorting and selling certain items, and composting, and seeing how these methods were over time stigmatized for some reason or another and burial of trash became so ubiquitous just because it was easy and cheap despite all the problems it caused.
I liked how the author took a different approach than others and even looked at Goodwill and how it came about as a way of making people feel better about discarding items, since it went to people in need. I also like how she pointed out that even though the items were donated, they still end up being sold, contributing to the increase in consumerism at the time and even today.
It was interesting to see why so many people I've known in the waste management industry hate Waste Management Inc. so much - they are a huge company which profits from waste and so doesn't really discourage it and actually tries to make landfills appear "green."
I thought she was a bit too harsh on green capitalism, in particular on the Cradle to Cradle idea. I think if she had read "the Upcycle" she would agree much more with the ideas presented by Braungart and McDonough. I see her issues with continuing this rate of consumerism constantly and not attempting to slow it down and reuse items but I think that Braungart and McDonough would agree that reusing items is best, it's just that they are also focused on redesigning things like house paint which are not exactly things that can simply be reused. It just seems that she is a bit overcritical of their ideas - she chastises them for bragging about the new plant they designed for Ford, since Ford still produces such low-efficiency cars, but at the same time, since they worked on that plant it has become an example for other businesses and if they had refused just because it was a car company they might never have been able to implement their ideas and show that they work. The authors of Cradle to Cradle are striving for an always-better model of business but they stress that you have to start somewhere, so for them any change in the right direction is a good starting point. Rogers seems to see this as "greenwashing" no matter what and I see her point because a lot of businesses are "greenwashing" the customers, but that is why the Cradle-to-Cradle certification has a lot of different levels - a greenwashing business would probably stay in the bronze category indefinitely while a business that is serious about changing would progress up the levels over time.
Overall this was a very informative book that takes a hard look at our waste practices and how we got here. I enjoyed the fact that she went into the history of waste disposal since that gives some ideas of what to do with our waste, and what worked in the past versus what didn't.
I liked how the author took a different approach than others and even looked at Goodwill and how it came about as a way of making people feel better about discarding items, since it went to people in need. I also like how she pointed out that even though the items were donated, they still end up being sold, contributing to the increase in consumerism at the time and even today.
It was interesting to see why so many people I've known in the waste management industry hate Waste Management Inc. so much - they are a huge company which profits from waste and so doesn't really discourage it and actually tries to make landfills appear "green."
I thought she was a bit too harsh on green capitalism, in particular on the Cradle to Cradle idea. I think if she had read "the Upcycle" she would agree much more with the ideas presented by Braungart and McDonough. I see her issues with continuing this rate of consumerism constantly and not attempting to slow it down and reuse items but I think that Braungart and McDonough would agree that reusing items is best, it's just that they are also focused on redesigning things like house paint which are not exactly things that can simply be reused. It just seems that she is a bit overcritical of their ideas - she chastises them for bragging about the new plant they designed for Ford, since Ford still produces such low-efficiency cars, but at the same time, since they worked on that plant it has become an example for other businesses and if they had refused just because it was a car company they might never have been able to implement their ideas and show that they work. The authors of Cradle to Cradle are striving for an always-better model of business but they stress that you have to start somewhere, so for them any change in the right direction is a good starting point. Rogers seems to see this as "greenwashing" no matter what and I see her point because a lot of businesses are "greenwashing" the customers, but that is why the Cradle-to-Cradle certification has a lot of different levels - a greenwashing business would probably stay in the bronze category indefinitely while a business that is serious about changing would progress up the levels over time.
Overall this was a very informative book that takes a hard look at our waste practices and how we got here. I enjoyed the fact that she went into the history of waste disposal since that gives some ideas of what to do with our waste, and what worked in the past versus what didn't.
August 29, 2012
I read this when it first came out, in 2006, and despite other reviewers' complaints of its dullness, I found it fascinating and extremely readable. And it angered me. One particular chapter I remember most clearly - one that I tend to cite during dinner parties, before I stop myself - is called "The Golden Age of Waste", and deals with the post-war consumer boom in America. Everyone had a kitchen full of shiny new appliances, so advertisers began to convince people they needed a second fridge for the garage, a second washer and dryer for the "related living" setup in their new sprawling ranches. When this tactic failed to move enough units, the idea of built-in obsolescence began to take hold.
Or take the neat trick that pop bottlers have pulled on the American public since the early 1970s: To maximize profits, they did away with multi-use, refillable bottles, and shifted the burden of bottle disposal onto the consumer, then admonished the consumer to "Keep America Beautiful(KAB)." The story of how this was effected, and the cynicism of the KAB campaign is enough to make any recycling-minded person weep.
Author Heather Rogers was born the year before this reviewer, and one suspects she, too, was a child of PBS's "Sesame Street" and "The Big Blue Marble," and was also encouraged to "Give a Hoot" by Woodsy the Owl. Her clear prose and meticulous research make this a book to be savored and revisited, and recommended to anyone with even a passing interested in understanding the history and problems of garbage in America.
Or take the neat trick that pop bottlers have pulled on the American public since the early 1970s: To maximize profits, they did away with multi-use, refillable bottles, and shifted the burden of bottle disposal onto the consumer, then admonished the consumer to "Keep America Beautiful(KAB)." The story of how this was effected, and the cynicism of the KAB campaign is enough to make any recycling-minded person weep.
Author Heather Rogers was born the year before this reviewer, and one suspects she, too, was a child of PBS's "Sesame Street" and "The Big Blue Marble," and was also encouraged to "Give a Hoot" by Woodsy the Owl. Her clear prose and meticulous research make this a book to be savored and revisited, and recommended to anyone with even a passing interested in understanding the history and problems of garbage in America.
February 28, 2008
excellent. This book is very factually and at times get drag, but the facts about the history and impact of US garbage are horrific. This book will change the way you choose to purchase and consume. Americans consume way to much garbage, and useless products and packaging. I believe I can not change everything but that one person CAN do so much, and try their hardest not to be one of the billions of people carelessly polluting the earth. It isn't as though our consumption began from need, it began because of the advertising and sales industry, and the government joined right in. Advertising and government was the carrote and we were the horse. There have been so many tactical errors along the way. Our situation may not have gotten so bad if someone had told the American people not to be lead like horses so easily down the marketing/advertising path of individual packaging, and throw away products. Ok so I'm just rambling now, but people need to wake up and realize that just because a product is cute, compact, and tossable it isnt really what you want, and odds are you don't NEED it either. THINK BEFORE YOU BUY!
December 3, 2013
Gone Tomorrow was a very eye opening book about the reality of waste in America. It really focuses on how capitalism has had a major influence on the amount of garbage that is produced each year. It also focuses on the amount of garbage produced by every person each day and where it all goes.
I liked how this book sort of gives you a behind the scenes look a what is really happening. It lets the reader know that this is a huge environmental issue that is worsening each day due to the selfishness of big corporations and the carelessness of people.
I did not like that this book was almost depressing to read. Heather Rogers is constantly throwing all of these facts at the read about what is really going on and there aren't many steps being taken to stop it. Even recycling isn't all that it's made out to be, most of what is recycled gets either buried or burned.
Overall this book was great, it was very informative, never letting the reader down with facts and it gets right to the point.
I liked how this book sort of gives you a behind the scenes look a what is really happening. It lets the reader know that this is a huge environmental issue that is worsening each day due to the selfishness of big corporations and the carelessness of people.
I did not like that this book was almost depressing to read. Heather Rogers is constantly throwing all of these facts at the read about what is really going on and there aren't many steps being taken to stop it. Even recycling isn't all that it's made out to be, most of what is recycled gets either buried or burned.
Overall this book was great, it was very informative, never letting the reader down with facts and it gets right to the point.
October 11, 2007
"The important thing to remember about landfills is that they're not just an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism; they actually represent the success of capitalism" (152). So Heather Rogers quotes John Marshall. Rogers quotes many waste historians, business insiders, government officials, and grassroots activists in this well researched and written book. She traces the modern conceptions of "garbage" and the disposal of "garbage" from 1800's America when few had many manufactured goods and gleaning was common to modern day consumption and disposal. Between these times ideas and realities (created in business interests) of sanitation, litter - yes, corporations created anti-litter campaigns to divert attention from garbage - disposable and non-durable products, packaging as a money making tool, and corporate greenwashing (among many other issues!) shaped today's prevailing attitudes toward trash. Rogers also includes inspiring resistance to corporate tactics throughout the book.
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