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‘Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future�� by Oliver Franklin-Wallis is eye-opening and depressing. Franklin-Wallis has pulled together seemingly everything that has been discovered, researched and analyzed about many types of waste from multiple sources: scientific studies, journalists�� articles, engineer/scientist interviews, and relevant historical records. He also traveled all over the world to make personal visits to see for himself the city dumps, plastic/paper/electronics recycling factories, sewers, tanneries, water treatment plants, mine tailings lakes/dams and nuclear waste processing facilities.

He writes of solutions to reduce waste every modern household can try, as well as what governments around the world are doing, as well as not doing, to fix their waste problems. When I read the sections involving how Western governments ‘solve�� some of the textile waste problems by, for example, baling and shipping used or fast-fashion clothing to poor countries, or ‘solving�� the electronic waste problem by shipping used or old (sometimes not really old and still works great but tech companies refuse to continue updating the software - planned obsolescence in both clothing and electronics), to poor countries needing to give their people jobs, or to countries willing to accept used electronic parts and devices for a fee, I understood for the first time how politically that the concept of doing/not doing recycling can be done at the same time.

The number one thing each of us can do to reduce waste: buy less stuff.

I have copied the book blurb:

”NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER, THE GUARDIAN, and KIRKUS REVIEWS

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?

In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a shocking journey inside the waste industry—the secretive multi-billion dollar world that underpins the modern economy, quietly profiting from what we leave behind. In India, he meets the waste-pickers on the front line of the plastic crisis. In the UK, he journeys down sewers to confront our oldest—and newest—waste crisis, and comes face-to-face with nuclear waste. In Ghana, he follows the after-life of our technology and explores the global export network that results in goodwill donations clogging African landfills. From an incinerator to an Oklahoma ghost-town, Franklin-Wallis travels in search of the people and companies that really handle waste—and on the way, meets the innovators and campaigners pushing for a cleaner and less wasteful future. ��
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With this mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and occasionally terrifying investigation, Oliver Franklin-Wallis tells a new story of humanity based on what we leave behind, and along the way, he shares a blueprint for building a healthier, more sustainable world—before we’re all buried in trash.��

I was unaware of most of what is included in ‘Wasteland��. Most governments are now on board with acknowledging there are world-wide waste problems which need solving. But the book shows most governments are doing nothing except media PR proclamations of changing corporate and individual behaviors or of temporarily forcing polluters to comply with new environment laws regarding cleaning up areas made toxic by wastes - and that only happens when a journalist exposes some horrific human abuses/losses are occurring because of toxic waste. For-profit and non-profit recycling businesses apparently must contend with technology that doesn’t live up to the promises made or an overabundance of waste overwhelming the business, and a boom/bust of buyers for their recycled products. Poor countries cannot properly provide any or have only a few showcase technological facilities that recycle waste. Recycling facilities are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. But it appears to me that even if governments made it a top priority (which they aren’t) to encourage recycling and to provide financing for recycling projects of all kinds necessary to process all of the different kinds of waste, there is so much of some types of waste that nothing can be done to stay ahead of it in most countries, for example, poop and plastic and clothes. Instead, as the author suggests, societies need to completely change their shopping and eating habits, and completely redesign all businesses, factories, plants, packaging, etc., and completely do away with the cultures of throw-away mindsets, replacing it with fix it, sew-it and patch-it repairs. Of course, entire businesses, such as clothing manufacturers, would suffer tremendous financial losses, or facilities that provide power for electricity, or manufacturers of new cars, etc. would crash down into oblivion, taking the jobs of billions of people down with them.

The book adds more details and specifics, especially more incidents in more locations, than the Youtube videos I decided to link to in my review. The videos provide general visuals to the same subjects the author writes about in depth.


Here are youtube links -


How MRF’s (Material Recovery Facility) work:




This one to a quick overview of municipal garbage dumps:




This link to recycling facilities:




Human waste treatment plants:






This link to Kantamanto, the largest secondhand clothes market in Ghana:




Paper recycling:




Plastic recycling:




Mine tailings dams keep failing, poisoning water supplies for drinking, agriculture and wild life:




How tanneries work:




Nuclear waste issues:




Everything above requires toxic, and often forever, chemicals to process whatever products are being manufactured, mined or broken down, and lots of water, which in many places in the world, the used liquids are simply emptied into the nearby stream or lake without being treated.

The book has an extensive Notes section.