Trash Talk Unveiling The Fascinating World Of Waste
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Trash Talk: Unveiling the Fascinating World of Waste
Unveil the fascinating world of waste in 'Trash Talk'! Explore hidden truths, innovative solutions, and the captivating story behind what we throw away.
High Tech Trash
The Digital Age was expected to usher in an era of clean production, an alternative to smokestack industries and their pollutants. But as environmental journalist Elizabeth Grossman reveals in this penetrating analysis of high tech manufacture and disposal, digital may be sleek, but it's anything but clean. Deep within every electronic device lie toxic materials that make up the bits and bytes, a complex thicket of lead, mercury, cadmium, plastics, and a host of other often harmful ingredients. High Tech Trash is a wake-up call to the importance of the e-waste issue and the health hazards involved. Americans alone own more than two billion pieces of high tech electronics and discard five to seven million tons each year. As a result, electronic waste already makes up more than two-thirds of the heavy metals and 40 percent of the lead found in our landfills. But the problem goes far beyond American shores, most tragically to the cities in China and India where shiploads of discarded electronics arrive daily. There, they are "recycled"-picked apart by hand, exposing thousands of workers and community residents to toxics. As Grossman notes, "This is a story in which we all play a part, whether we know it or not. If you sit at a desk in an office, talk to friends on your cell phone, watch television, listen to music on headphones, are a child in Guangdong, or a native of the Arctic, you are part of this story." The answers lie in changing how we design, manufacture, and dispose of high tech electronics. Europe has led the way in regulating materials used in electronic devices and in e-waste recycling. But in the United States many have yet to recognize the persistent human health and environmental effects of the toxics in high tech devices. If Silent Spring brought national attention to the dangers of DDT and other pesticides, High Tech Trash could do the same for a new generation of technology's products.
The Big Necessity
An “extraordinary” look at the stubborn problem of human waste disposal: “Among the best nonfiction books of the new millennium.” —The New York Times Acclaimed as “valuable and often entertaining” (Los Angeles Times), The Big Necessity defies the taboo on bodily waste—something common to all and as natural as breathing. We prefer not to talk about it, but we should—even those of us who take care of our business in pristine, sanitary conditions. Disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death. Even in America, nearly two million people have no access to an indoor toilet. Yet the subject remains unmentionable. Moving from the underground sewers of Paris, London, and New York (an infrastructure disaster waiting to happen) to an Indian slum where ten toilets are shared by 60,000 people, The Big Necessity breaks the silence, revealing everything that matters about how people do—and don’t—deal with their own waste. With razor-sharp wit and crusading urgency, mixing levity with gravity, Rose George has turned the subject we like to avoid into a cause with the most serious of consequences. “One smart book . . . delving deep into the history and implications of a daily act that dare not speak its name.” —Newsweek “Makes a passionate argument for putting sanitation at the top of the world’s development agenda.” —Time “With irreverence and pungent detail, George breaks the embarrassed silence over the economic, political, social and environmental problems of human waste disposal. Full of fascinating facts . . . an intrepid, erudite and entertaining journey through the public consequences of this most private behavior.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)