Garbology, Edward Humes
Garbology, Edward Humes
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Garbology
Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash

Author: Edward Humes

Narrator: Joe Barrett

Unabridged: 8 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/28/2016

Synopsis

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's 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.

About Edward Humes

Edward Humes is the author of a number of critically acclaimed nonfiction books, including Eco Barons, Monkey Girl, Over Here, School of Dreams, Baby ER, Mean Justice, No Matter How Loud I Shout, and the bestseller Mississippi Mud. He has received the Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and numerous awards for his books. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, and Sierra. He lives in California.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Chad

I have this habit of thumbing through the new books in my campus library while waiting for lunch to heat up in the microwave located there. I came across this book like this, read a couple lines, and checked it out. I read the introduction while eating lunch and was immediately fascinated. Having no......more

Goodreads review by Cindy

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......more

Goodreads review by Beth

I found some chapters more fascinating than others. The story about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch would make an excellent children's picture book. The section on landfills was also interesting. I do love my two Chicobags, and was surprised they had been targeted in legal battles by Big Plastic. I......more

Goodreads review by Charlene

This book got off to a slow start, providing a somewhat interesting but well - told history of trash, but soon became much more interesting and unique, teaching me many things I of which I was fairly unaware. Starting at the dawn of civilization, Humes detailed the various steps humans took to get r......more

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