The Green Transition Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. From the mountainous landfills of New Delhi to Britain’s overflowing sewers, from hollowed-out mining towns in the USA to Ghana’s flooded second-hand markets, we meet the people on the frontline of our waste crisis – both those being exploited, and those determined to make a difference.

It is, by any measure, a miraculous element: a single pellet barely larger than a multivitamin can generate as much energy as a ton of coal, without any direct carbon emissions. Eight billion individuals can make a difference, it’s just…why are we still needing to be reminded to recycle after *decades*? I've been fascinated by what people throw away ever since and when I saw this book, I immediately added it. With his investigative chops and contagious curiosity, Oliver Franklin-Wallis has cracked wide a dozen hidden, jaw-dropping worlds . He also makes a visit to Sellafield, passing the armed guards at the entrance to see what we are doing with the waste from nuclear plants.While reducing our consumption seems to be the most effective personal tool at our disposal, there will always be a trade-off between sustainability and convenience given the post industrial revolution society that we are all used to. It’s an ethos…People don’t understand that we are part of nature and that this (composting) is a natural cycle. It is demoralizing and exhausting knowing this problem exists and is a threat yet being unable to do anything about it on the personal level.

Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. An award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep dive into the global waste crisis, exposing the hidden world that enables our modern economy — and finds out the dirty truth behind a simple what really happens to what we throw away?

But this isn’t just a UK issue, the 8 billion of us in the world generate millions of tonnes of waste and a lot of this is shipped around the world to countries that have ended up dealing with it, so he heads out to Africa to see where the ultra-cheap clothes end up after people have worn them a handful of times and onto India to see the enormous landfill sites there and the people picking through the rubbish with the hope of scraping a living. If you need a nudge to help you cut your consumption habits, or want to know more about this fascinating but hidden (to the western world anyway) part of modern life, this is the book for you and you should stop reading this rant now.

It was interesting, though heartbreaking, to learn of the waste pickers around the world, especially in developing countries who sort through our trash, finding things to use and sell. His eye for detail, honed over years of non-fiction writing, turns the abstract into the immediate – and the alarming .Hachette Book Group is a leading book publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the third-largest publisher in the world. Wasteland was conceived when, in the spring of 2019, Franklin-Wallis visited Green Recycling, a “materials recovery facility”, to report on a story for the Guardian about a crisis in the waste industry.

However, a fair warning is warranted, this book will almost guaranteed make you feel like a total shit. Organisations and corporates need to take more ownership of their supply chain and the way they manufacture products. I want to give this book to everyone in my life - especially people who think caring about where their trash goes isn’t worth the effort. Oliver Franklin-Wallis is an award-winning magazine journalist, whose writing has appeared in GQ, WIRED, The Guardian, the New York Times, The Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Economist's 1843 magazine, and many other publications.

Multiply by the sheer quantity of devices, and the impact is vast: a single recycler in China, GEM, produces more cobalt than the country’s mines each year. Does that mean we shouldn’t resell our stuff and try to extend the life of things wherever possible? While we congratulate ourselves on saving the planet, traders in Africa are left to eke out a living from poor-quality fast fashion.