Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
Clapp sounds the alarm ... Despite such depressing conclusions, reading Waste Wars isn’t depressing. Clapp is a lively writer, and his deeply researched book deftly combines history and global economics with stories of real people and tangible details of modern life. You will never look at plastic bags the same way.
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Dispiriting premise notwithstanding, Waste Wars does manage to live up to the adventurous ring of its subtitle; trash’s afterlife is wild indeed. Readers follow the author on a whirlwind tour to discover what, exactly, happens to the things we chuck in the bin ... Serves up a stirring picture of the deliberate and surprisingly profitable despoliation of one half of the planet by the other ...
There are moments, in Clapp’s book, of great sweep and humanity, and even a few of surprising levity. But these must be looked for, bobbing forlorn amid the computer parts and zip-lock bags stretching clear to the horizon.
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A colonoscopy in book form, an exploration of the guts of the modern world ... The biggest villain in the global trash economy is plastic, and Clapp shows in horrifying detail the intractability of this problem ... Waste Wars demonstrates the mounting consequences of such inaction: Residents of wealthier nations are jeopardizing much of the planet in exchange for the freedom to ignore the consequences of their own convenience.
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