The economic engine we call capitalism depends on several things. One, a continuous stream of affordable energy. Two, a continuous stream of new raw materials. Three, continuous consumption.

The logical outcome is a continuous stream of waste! And that is what we see, of course. All these “growing markets” and all that consumption means we have to throw away the old stuff. And throw it away we do!

It’s hard to get people to care about their trash. Fortunately there’s a book about it:

I’m not going to tell you this is the best book in the world or anything like that. But it is well-written, thoughtful, and has a sense of urgency. Mostly, it’s the topic. I think garbage is a pretty damn important topic. We all know we live in a throwaway society. Sure we have recycling and food and clothing charities, but mostly we throw stuff away. And mostly that stuff ends up in giant dumps in poor countries.

We export our waste. Even the waste we keep we take an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude and bury the stuff. There really should be no such thing as waste. All the stuff we throw away is just an under-utilized resource.

In the developing world, they use our waste. They pick out stuff that still has value. It’s ugly, dirty, dangerous work done by the world’s poorest people. We hear a lot about “American jobs, American industry, American workers” from the current regime. Here’s an industry we need—waste recovery. Instead of shoring up a nonsense racket like “crypto-currency” we should take a serious look at our recycling and waste management systems.

Oliver Franklin-Wallis’ book is a good place to start. The subtitle on the USA edition is the secret world of waste and the urgent search for a cleaner future and that unfortunately sounds like something a corporate green-washing committee would come up with!

I like the subtitle on the UK edition (pictured below): the dirty truth about what we throw away, where it goes, and why it matters. That’s much more direct. Regardless, read the book!