Garbology: Examining Our Relationship with Waste

Loril Shannik: Book was in good shape as advertised and arrived on schedule.

Canada on Jan 04, 2021

Ms Hickman: Yes, a bit stodgy in patches, but a compreshensive journey from the 50s to present day. A good read for the layman to find out how we got to here - thanks, Mr Eisenhower! It is powerful, and (mostly) readable it will spike the reader to find out more, do more, about the terrible scourge of modern life.... Plastic, in all it's forms. It can even prompt an MSc dissertation topic - it did for me!

United Kingdom on Apr 04, 2019

David Ecale: Sometimes a good book comes along with a compelling theme. This book is one of those rare items. The theme is our addiction to trash. There are a few other books on similar topics (hording and recycling) available on Kindle that are good reads. In the case of this book, I'd like to walk the future reader through a few of the developments in the increasing of the trash stream over the years that I have seen (and are covered in this book).

1) Glass returnable milk, beverage, and beer bottles have been converted to one way glass & plastic containers: glass milk bottles in the 1970s; returnable glass soda bottles to "No Deposit - No Return" glass bottles in the 1960s & later to plastic; and returnable (long neck) beer bottles in the 1980s. (Note: in poor countries, those glass bottles are sometimes cleaned, relabeled, and refilled with other products. In the Philippines, for example, 5 gallon cooking oil cans are cut into wedge shaped forms and have a slat of wood added to them to make them into an ash/trash scoop. Also, old beer & wine bottles are reused as local fish sauce bottles!)

2) The dramatic technological increases in computer capabilities that makes...

United States on Oct 31, 2014

mike: Came in perfect condition.

Canada on Aug 29, 2014

johnh: Not a great piece of writing, but this book draws our attention to the growing challenge of waste forcefully and with some well chosen examples that stay in the mind. You won't look at your own rubbish the same way again.

United Kingdom on Apr 29, 2014

G. Bridey: Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

Written from a U.S. perspective and in a somewhat ponderous style, this book is of most interest to non-U.S. readers when it details some of the frightening statistics of the global garbage scene -- especially of the threat posed by the careless disposal of the plastics we use in everyday life. An interesting insight, also, into the way in which powerful interest groups can succeed in negating proposals to combat the threat posed by irresponsible
disposal of waste materials.

United Kingdom on Jun 27, 2012

C. Ash: I encountered this book by chance when part of the NPR interview of Edward Humes, author of Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash caught my attention.

In the interview, Humes was talking about Bakelite, an early plastic that was used for billiard balls, piano keys, and telephones -- things that were meant to be durable, and have long, even heirloom-length, lives. He was calm and reasoned, not casting blame but describing a shift in the way materials are used as being problematic. It was impersonal, informative, and assumed intelligence from the audience.

Humes opens the book with an anecdote of elderly hoarders, Jesse & Thelma Gaston, who had been trapped in their own home, by their own trash, for three weeks. He moves further into the story of trash by describing other hoarders, the condition of hoarding, and the media attention it has received in the last few years. His punchline is startling:

"But little if any thought is given to the refuse itself, or to the rather scarier question of how any person, hoarder or not, can possibly generate so much trash so quickly.
Of course, there's a reason for this blind spot: namely, the amount of junk,...

United States on Apr 30, 2012