Garbology

Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

By: Edward Humes

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

The average American produces 102 tons of garbage across a lifetime, and $50 billion in squandered riches are rolled to the curb each year. But our bins are just the starting point for a strange, impressive, mysterious, and costly journey that may also represent the greatest untapped opportunity of the century.

In Garbology, Edward Humes investigates trash - what's in it; how much we pay for it; how we manage to create so much of it; and how some families, communities, and even nations are finding a way back from waste to discover a new kind of prosperity. Along the way he introduces a collection of garbage denizens unlike anyone you've ever met: the trash-tracking detectives of MIT, the bulldozer-driving sanitation workers building Los Angeles' Garbage Mountain landfill, the artists residing in San Francisco's dump, and the family whose annual trash output fills not a dumpster or a trash can but a single mason jar.

Garbology reveals not just what we throw away but who we are and where our society is headed. Waste is the one environmental and economic harm that ordinary working Americans have the power to change - and prosper in the process.

©2012 Edward Humes (P)2016 Tantor

Great listen!!!

This was a great book to listen to to get the basics on where our garbage goes and the future of our waste stream.

Very insightful

Easy to listen and comprehend. I found it informative and useful. Got some ideas how to reduce clutter.

It might make you feel guilty.

However it also might inspire you to make less garbage and be part of the solution not such a big part of the problem.

A phenomenal read & serious eye-opener

I absolutely recommend this book. Everyone needs to know the information & insight it reveals about trash, what we do with it, & our remarkable rate of accumulating it. Read it & tell a friend, I’m baffled this still isn’t a common source of discussion

Eye opening book...

I would recommend this to everyone. Fantastic stats and easy to follow. The narrator has a little lisp or something so you cant listen too loud, but after the first chapter you almost stop noticing.

Fascinating, enlightening and essential

I was not exaggerating with my review above. It is indeed all of that if you are new to the world of trash. If you know the basics , been to a landfill, somehow familiar with politics of trash management then may be garbology is the only novel item you’ll find.

Also this book is not a go to guide on lowering your trash. But it offers all the reasons you may need to contextualize the virtue of minimalism and the contend the modern ultra consumerism.

Highly educational, essential and will strongly recommend this irrespective of they are into such books or not , because if one can manage to read few chapters, they will still get out with something valuable.

Motivating!

Learned a lot. Motivated to ban plastic. Was unaware of Lee County's progressive recycling efforts.

Surprised

This book was way better than I expected it to be. His research is properly broad and details multiple sides of our problem well. This is a great example of a good nonfiction book and is well worth the price of a hard copy.

Very informative!

I loved this book. I’ve read a handful of books about waste and this was one of the few that I feel really made an impact on me. Great read and very inspiring

Insightful education, everyone needs

We need help dispelling myths And this let us know where to focus our efforts in interesting captivating story telling