Garbage Land lifts the lid on trash. As author Elizabeth Royte notes, rubbish is a national industry: If you include pre-consumption waste, we Americans generate about 11.7 billion tons of waste per year. For most of us, garbage is "out of sight, out of mind," but Royte proves that our refuse will always be with us. In this fascinating book, she takes us on a jaunty guided tour of waste management, compostable matter, recyclables, and sewage.
Royte, whose previous book, 'The Tapir's Morning Bath, followed researchers in the tropical rain forest, here follows an assortment of garbage collectors, recyclers and sewage treaters, beginning with the men who pick up the stuff she leaves at her curb in Brooklyn on trash day. The idea is to see how much damage she is personally doing in the grand scheme of things and how she might minimize it; to get beyond the easy plateau of environmental awareness (don't eat endangered fish) and look at, well, the outflow. ''It wasn't fair, I reasoned, to feel connected to the rest of the world only on the front end, to the waving fields of grain and the sparkling mountain streams,'' she writes. ''We needed to cop to a downstream connection as well.''
— The New York Times
Royte discovers that alternatives, such as recyclable paperboard boxes, generate waste as well. "Which was preferable? The choices, like so many at the intersection of consumerism and environmental concern, were agonizing." The difficulty of making wise, meaningful decisions is a factor Royte often acknowledges in her praiseworthy book. But just as important as her admission that she doesn't have all the answers is her persuasive demonstration that no one does.
— The Washington Post
In Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte shines a light on everyone's dirty secret. Like a garbage detective, she follows the used plastic bags, drink containers, old newspapers and, yes, bodily excretions that disappear into the trash can or down the toilet, only to reappear somewhere else, out of sight and out of mind … It's a fascinating, sometimes tiring, often depressing tour.
— The New York Times
The v-p of a New York City waste transfer station recommends, "You want to solve the garbage problem? Stop eating. Stop living." Indeed, to ponder waste disposal is to confront the very limits of our society. Where does it all go? Most of us are content to shrug off the details-as long as it's out of sight (and smell). Not so journalist Royte, whose book in some ways (including its title) echoes Fast Food Nation. That McDonald's is more immediately engaging a subject doesn't make, say, the massive, defunct Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, N.Y., any less compelling. Royte nicely balances autobiographical elements (where does her Fig Newmans carton end up, anyway?), interviews and fieldwork with more technical research. Her method yields palpable benefits, not least a wealth of vivid refuse-related slang (maggots are known as disco rice). The details unavoidably venture into the nauseating on occasion, and some might find the chemistry of trichloroethane and other toxins a bit dull. As the NIMBY logic of waste disposal forces its practitioners into secrecy, Royte is obliged to engage in some entertainingly furtive skullduggery. All in all, this is a comprehensive, readable foray into a world we'd prefer not to heed-but should. Agent, Heather Shroder. (July 13) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Royte (The Tapir's Morning Bath) reminds us that what we dispose of is a window on our culture and consumption habits. Determined to follow the path of household trash, sewage, and recyclables, she began by visiting the New York City Department of Sanitation (she lives in Brooklyn) and accompanying sanitation workers on their routes. In the course of tracking the garbage to landfills, incinerators, and sewage and recycling facilities, she discovered that America disposes of 369 million tons of municipal waste annually-which generates over $50 billion a year in revenue. She explains the many facets of garbage disposal, what determines the location of a landfill, and the array of disposal and processing alternatives. She also raises serious questions about garbage disposal and its impact on public health. The upbeat views of garbage workers who see their roles as performing a vital service are particularly revealing. Royte's exploration of the economic, territorial, and ecological perspectives of garbage disposal adds up to a fascinating trail of trash. Recommended for all who throw things away.-Irwin Weintraub, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., NY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
The Great Garbage Tour may sound like a grunge music extravaganza, but it's actually the author following her "rejectamenta" to its logical end. Who hasn't wondered about where our colossal amount of garbage goes? Journalist Royte (The Tapir's Morning Bath, 2001) wants to find answers: How does recycling work? Where, when we flush the toilet, does its cargo go? And what happens to all the plain old putrescence we create? The U.S. produces 369 million tons of garbage a year, or 1.3 tons per person, annually. Happily, 27% of it is recycled or composted, while nearly 8% is incinerated, and a godawful 65% goes into the ground. It's not surprising that for years "garbage has changed hands through cronyism and favors, and landed on the backs of disenfranchised," usually in great landfills that bring dollars to destitute communities, along with health and standard-of-living problems. These landfills are aptly named "brownfields," with their attendant groundwater contamination, litter, leachate and scavenging birds, all guarded like strategic targets for whatever secrets they hold. Only 100 years ago, 100,000 pigs cleaned New York City's streets of the organic wastes casually thrown there, but now the pigs-which created their own organic wastes, it must be said-are gone, and our wastes are different, consisting of more paper, more glass, more plastic. The last will prove to be the real bugaboo. It can be recycled to a point, but then degradation simply turns it into landfill material. Paper, in particular, Royte shows, doesn't get the attention it deserves: only 19% gets recycled, despite its clear economic value. You may not even want to know about the sludge farm experiments, where concentratedfecal material has created the ultimate of brownfields. While there are obvious ways to cope with waste-Royte clearly outlines them-the biggest problem is mindset: we're accustomed to the ease of the toss. Royte is a natural storyteller and skillful natural historian. Few others could have pulled off turning our feculence into fascination.
