Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 3 reviews on
In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a shocking journey inside the waste industry--the secretive multi-billion dollar world that underpins the modern economy, quietly profiting from what we leave behind. In India, he meets the waste-pickers on the front line of the plastic crisis. In the UK, he journeys down sewers to confront our oldest--and newest--waste crisis, and comes face-to-face with nuclear waste. In Ghana, he follows the after-life of our technology and explores the global export network that results in goodwill donations clogging African landfills. From an incinerator to an Oklahoma ghost-town, Franklin-Wallis travels in search of the people and companies that really handle waste--and on the way, meets the innovators and campaigners pushing for a cleaner and less wasteful future.
With this mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and occasionally terrifying investigation, Oliver Franklin-Wallis tells a new story of humanity based on what we leave behind, and along the way, he shares a blueprint for building a healthier, more sustainable world--before we're all buried in trash.
Franklin-Wallis comes to see plastic recycling as so much (potentially toxic) smoke and mirrors. A kind of playbook has emerged: under public pressure, a company pledges to insure that the packaging for its products gets recycled. When the pressure eases, it abandons its pledge.
“Wasteland” is heavy on facts, many of them interesting and sobering... It does not offer novel solutions to the problem of waste... But the author succeeds in outlining the size of the challenge. His book should prompt serious discussion in boardrooms and parliaments.
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That bottle you recycled? It probably ended up in a landfill, according to Oliver Franklin-Wallis's alarming exposé, Wasteland. Read PW's starred review: https://t.co/XKTJodNy17 @HachetteBooks https://t.co/kpLKSGR4f9