I started this book with high hopes: scrap is a serious component of globalization. After all, one man's junk is another man's opportunity. Minter's folksy, i was there narrative is a little unexpected. And for a while, quite frankly, it got on my nerves. But Minter does get to see things you and I will just never see. And his reactions, even for somebody steeped in scrap from the crib, are things we can all identify with. He sees the imbalances in expectations between developed and under-developed societies. He sees wealth re-distributed. He sees innovation and imagination at work. And he sees the inexorable march of consumption. Recycling simply does't make our planet more liveable. It may put off the inevitable environmental catastrophe, but it cannot alter fate. It is a sad yet compelling look at what happens to junk: where it goes, who it enriches, and what we have to gain by consuming less. I heartily recommend this book to you. ( )

I found the book immeasurably useful for better understanding of contemporary world, its real inner workings, its shortcomings and threats to it as well as some future perspectives.

I like familiarizing with various industries serving our needs, but whose proceedings are largely under our conscious radar. Now it’s easier to do, since a number of interesting titles were released on, say, funeral business and global floral trade, - huge and complicated and very responsive – businesses, of whose mechanisms we either unaware or don’t want to be aware. Still they are important. And surely the business of getting rid of our waste is of paramount importance. Especially, when it’s something more than dumping everything in landfills or seas.

Already several curious books were published on the matter, but I started my research with this title. Make no mistake – this is not an immediate page-turner, yet time and again you’d be rewarded for your perseverance. Moreover, you maybe will find passages that slowed me down far more exciting than I did. They mostly concern author’s own reminiscences about his own experience with the business of scrap recycling – his family had a scrap yard. At this stage I think I learned more than necessary about intimate relations of his family. Yet later in the book his background will help him to get better interviewees and go farther in his investigation, just because people learned he used to get his hand dirty and was essentially one of them.

Another good thing that makes the author most suited for the job is his later sufficiently long career as a journalist for two leading global scrap industry magazines. Hence he has tons of relevant data at his fingertips (and book is thoroughly equipped with stats and prices, current and historical) and a personal acquaintance with a big number of key people worldwide, which makes the book very informative and truly worldwide in its scope (my country Russia is not touched, but I forget him this :) - it may be statistically insignificant in this matter).

The book tackles 'afterlife' of major types of our waste - metals, plastics, paper, cars, and electronics&mobiles - in general everything that could be recycled profitably, which is probably the reason why food leftovers and the like are not covered. Then again, they are probably biodegradable by themselves anyway or a materials for a separate investigation.

What I also liked is that his book is not just a mere travel guide to this “underworld”, but also an invitation to think over how we got here, what are the good and bad parts of it, what future scenarios are possible. You may not agree with his musings here and there, but at least they are very pertinent to the narrative, helping it to become more than just an industry snapshot and sequences of scripted interviews with insiders.

Lastly, here's a little yet important quote from the last pages of the book, which argues for a paradigm shift:

"Jesse Catlin and Yitong Wang, authors of an article in the January 2013 issue of Journal of Consumer Psychology, say in the very last sentence of their paper: “Therefore, an important issue would be to identify ways to nudge consumers toward recycling while also making them aware that recycling is not a perfect solution and that reducing overall consumption is desirable as well.”

"...[I]f the goal is a realistic sustainable future, then it’s necessary to take a look at what we can do to lengthen the lives of the products we’re going to buy anyway. So my ... answer to the question of how we can boost recycling rates is this: Demand that companies start designing products for repair, reuse, and recycling.

Take, for example, the super-thin MacBook Air, a wonder of modern design packed into an aluminum case that’s barely bigger than a handful of documents in a manila envelope. At first glance, it would seem to be a sustainable wonder that uses fewer raw materials to do more. But that’s just the gloss; the reality is that the MacBook Air’s thin profile means that its components—memory chips, solid state drive, and processor—are packed so tightly in the case that there’s no room for upgrades (a point driven home by the unusual screws used to hold the case together, thus making home repair even more difficult). Even worse, from the perspective of recycling, the thin profile (and the tightly packed innards) means that the computer is exceptionally difficult to break down into individual components when it comes time to recycle it. In effect, the MacBook Air is a machine built to be shredded, not repaired, upgraded, and reused." ( )

3.5 stars

This was a very interesting read! Minter details the "scrap" trade – that is, what happens with our recyclables after we "recycle". He offers a very colorful look at American junkyards and recycling plants, as well as the families and businesses overseas (and in the States) that actually receive our leftovers, disassemble them, and remake them into new products, thereby keeping the world from having to mine all our "necessary" raw materials.

I learned a lot from this book! Though I want to take better care of our planet, I haven't always tried very hard to put those warm, fuzzy feelings into any sort of real action. I try to be mindful of purchasing only what I really need, and buy mostly second-hand, but I have a long way to go before I'll be at Bea Johnson-level.

Johnson, in her book [b:Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste|15802945|Zero Waste Home The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste|Bea Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359402733s/15802945.jpg|21526358], taught me that plastic cannot be recycled indefinitely – in fact, it's often only recycled once. After that, it's too low-grade to be recycled again. Minter, in this book, taught me that paper and cardboard also cannot be recycled indefinitely – the fibers break down after being recycled 6 or 7 times. Who knew?

"Nothing – nothing – is 100 percent recyclable, and many things, including things we think are recyclable, like iPhone touch screens, are unrecyclable. Everyone from the local junkyard to Apple to the U.S. government would be doing the planet a big favor if they stopped implying otherwise, and instead conveyed a more realistic picture of what recycling can and can't do." (p. 255)

In some ways, Minter helped me to understand that outsourcing our recyclables to China and other developing nations is a good thing – Americans aren't willing to do the work, while there are many able and willing persons around the world who need to support their families. But of course, there's an ugly side to recycling, such as the depressing scene painted of Wen'an, where plastic recycling has killed all of the green land and harmed the health of its inhabitants. (There's really no upside to plastic at all.)

"Between 1960 and 2010 the volume of recyclables that Americans harvested from their homes rose from 5.6 million to 65 million tons. That sounds pretty good until you realize that during the same period the amount of trash generated by those same Americans rose from 81.1 million to 249.9 million tons." (p.253)

In other words... if we want to treat our earth with the care that God intended, we'll need to address our greed, and stop consuming so much stuff! "Reduce, reuse, recycle" - there's a reason they're listed in that specific order!

I learned so much from this book and it really made me think!

(Side note, this particular material, I think, would have been even better in film-documentary form. I'm not very mechanically-minded, and there were many instances that Minter was describing various machine parts – I had a really hard time picturing them. There are some photos included in the book – thankfully! - but a movie is worth a bajillion pictures.) ( )

An interesting dive into the world of scrap dealing. Most interestingly (to me), there are nuggets of advice for the consumer and insight into where household waste goes when we "recycle" it. The personalization of the story kept me interested even though the topic can be kind of dry in some parts. ( )

Minter tries not to dodge some of the harder truths. By the time we're talking about recycling (instead of reducing consumption and reusing what we have) it's already too late for an ideal outcome. However, his conscious attempt to take the “junk business” more or less on its own terms leads to some unsatisfactory, even contradictory conclusions.

In particular, Minter constantly hammers home the market-driven nature of the industry, insisting that where there’s a profit to be made, clever people will find scalable solutions. But that minimizes the impact of the materials junked before The Market Found A Way, and does little to address the likelihood that in at least some cases, the market may never find a way until (or after) the continued existence of the market itself is threatened.

After an entire book largely dedicated to demonstrating that individual consumer action is mostly pointless window-dressing on vast systemic problems, Minter's reporting can’t help but be a little disappointing for anyone hoping for practical solutions, or even basic policy suggestions not inextricably tied to capitalist profit motives. (His hand-wringing over planned obsolescence in Apple gadgets seems particularly half-hearted given his extended argument that the “e-waste” issue gets more attention than it objectively deserves.) Still, as a reporter/observer Minter’s goal is to show us the (smoking, toxic waste-infested) abyss in front of us, and he succeeds there.