Review by Booklist Review
Journalist Clapp's first book delivers an eye-opening expose of the global trash trade. He comprehensively examines pesticide, medical device, and hazardous waste disposal, electronics recycling, shipbreaking (taking apart decommissioned cruise liners and other ships), and plastics disposal. The trail of castoffs goes from the Global North to the Global South, from wealthy to poor, with bad actors and shady deals along the way. Pesticides and medical devices banned in wealthy countries are repackaged as resources and sold or donated to poor countries. Precious metals originally plundered from Africa find their way back in broken electronics that workers earning pennies a day under ghastly working conditions take apart for reclamation. Corporations engage in greenwashing, sponsoring nonprofits like the Ocean Cleanup while continuing to churn out billions of single-use plastics. Building on the work of Rachel Carson and Vance Packard, citing astounding statistics on the growth of waste, and weaving in wrenching stories of people whose lives have been upended by garbage from far away, Clapp shines a spotlight on a subject that needs to be addressed.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Clapp debuts with a rollicking deep dive into the absurdities and intricacies of the global trash trade. In the 1970s, Western countries began exporting their toxic waste to developing nations; Clapp chronicles how, despite these nations having since banded together to end the toxic waste trade, it has continued to flourish under the guise of recycling. In Ghana, Clapp visits Agbogbloshie, a town where discarded electronics "donated" by Westerners are stripped for parts in hazardous and backbreaking work (which is actually for the Westerners' benefit--it prevents scammers from accessing their information). In Turkey, Clapp meets with the family of a young man who perished in the shipbreaking trade, which strips old cruise ships for parts (the steel contributes to Turkey's construction trade, a key source of power for President Erdoğan's rule). In Indonesia, Clapp discusses how the country's robust paper recycling program was forced by a complex series of machinations to take on U.S. plastic waste, and profiles farmers who've turned to trading plastic, which is burned as fuel. Clapp can veer into a provocatively melodramatic tone ("I had flown to Indonesia to witness the lunatic phenomenon of 'trash towns' "), but he also plainly states the cruel ironies facing his interviewees (one Agbogbloshie worker engaged in the dangerous trade of burning e-waste tells Clapp, "I pray to God every day to stop the burning. But for now I need it"). It's a stirring and dogged investigation. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Uncovering a dirty business. In the 1970s, a self-appointed "garbologist" went through the trash of famous folks like Bob Dylan and published lists of what he found, hoping to reveal dark secrets. In Charles Dickens' novelOur Mutual Friend, a character known as the Golden Dustman amasses a fortune from rubbish--or "dust" as the Victorians called it. Clapp, a journalist based in Greece, is a literal and figurative muckraker, exploring a slew of astonishing trash-related topics. In one chapter, he focuses on the island of Chios, observing that local residents rank among the world's "most unethical ship dismantlers." Clapp unearths trash and waste in Turkey, Ghana, Java, and Guatemala, which, he writes, "boast[s] a bleak history as the serial target of toxic waste dumping by US cities and corporations." Not surprisingly, the United States exports much of the world's trash. "By the early 2000s," Clapp writes, "America's biggest export to China was the stuff Americans tossed away." The European Union doesn't come off looking too clean, either. "At least as much plastic was getting jettisoned out of the European Union, from self-congratulating environmental stewards like Germany, whose state recycling quotas were often reliant on a filthy secret: much of the plastic that Germans claimed was getting 'recycled' was in fact getting shipped to the far side of the world, where its true fate was far from clear." Clapp is loath to end on a hopeful note, but he tells of Izzettin Akman, a farmer in Turkey whose oranges and lemons are threatened by tons of trash that is dumped--and set on fire--near his crops. Akman takes to pursuing the garbage trucks in his pickup--"a lonesome sheriff against a system of globe-spanning waste mismanagement," Clapp writes. "I'll keep following the trucks until they stop coming," Akman says. "Or until the world stops sending them." A fascinating and darkly revealing dive into the world's garbage. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
