Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

by Adam Minter

Here’s something true in all places and times: the richer you are, and the more educated you are, the more stuff you will throw away. In the United States, wealthy people not only buy more stuff but they buy more recyclable stuff, like the recyclable cans, bottles, and boxes that contain the goods they covet. That’s why, if you take a drive through a high-income, highly educated neighborhood on recycling day, you’ll see green and blue bins overflowing with neatly sorted newspapers, iPad boxes, wine bottles, and Diet Coke cans. Meanwhile, take a drive through a poor neighborhood, and you’ll invariably see fewer bins, and fewer recyclables. The people in the wealthier neighborhoods who did that sorting, that harvesting, were good stewards of their trash. But they wouldn’t have had the chance to be good stewards if they weren’t also very good consumers of stuff (just as poor people don’t harvest as much recycling in part because they don’t buy as much).