Garbology
Subtitle: our dirty love affair with trash
By: Edward Humes
Publisher: Avery
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781583334348
Subjects: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General; Salvage (Waste, etc.); TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Environmental / Waste Management; Refuse and refuse disposal; TRAVEL / General; Environmental engineering
Description: "A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist takes readers on a surprising tour of the world of garbage.  Trash is America's largest export. Individually, we make more than  four  pounds a day, sixty-four tons across a lifetime. We make so much  of it  that trash dominates America's place in the global economy--now  the most  prized product made in the United States. In 2010, China's  number-one  export to the U.S. was computer equipment. America's two  biggest exports  were paper waste and scrap metal. Somehow, a country  that once built  things for the rest of the world has transformed itself  into China's  trash compactor.  In Garbology, Edward Humes  reveals what  this world of trash looks like, how we got here, and what  some families,  communities, and other countries are doing to find a  way back from a  world of waste. Highlights include:   Los Angeles's  sixty-story  garbage mountain, so big and bizarrely prominent that it  has spawned its  own climate, habitat, and tour business.  The waste trackers of MIT, whose "smart trash" has exposed the secret life and dirty death of what we throw away.  China's garbage queen, Zhang Yin, who started collecting scrap paper  in  the 1990s and turned it into a multibillion-dollar business  exporting  American trash to make Chinese products to sell back to  Americans.  Artisan Bea Johnson, whose family has found that  generating less waste  has translated into more money, less debt, and  more leisure time.  As  Wal-Mart aims for zero-waste strategies  and household recycling has  become second nature, interest in trash has  clearly reached new heights.  From the quirky to the astounding, Garbology weighs in with remarkable true tales from the front lines of the war on waste. "--

"Narrative science book about trash"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.