Elizabeth Royte

I grew up watching eco-conscious shows like 3-2-1 Contact and I've always had the recycling bug. When our city recycling program stopped taking glass last year, it was like a knife in the liver. It almost kills me to put glass in the garbage bin. I've always bought grocery items in glass jars specifically because they were not plastic and wouldn't end up in the ocean, killing off sea birds and marine life. I'm the type of person who gives my house guests a tour of where the recycling bins show more are and am not above helicoptering over my mother to make sure she's playing by the house rules. So when Garbage Land popped up in my Recommendations, I knew it would find its way on to my library hold list.

Royte is one committed lady. She logged and documented her trash, recycling and composting for nearly a year. She visited landfills, recycling plants, composting plants, sewage treatment plants and sanitation garages as well as participated in eco fairs and industry conventions. She learned a lot about where our wastes go and it's impressive, informative and surprising.

Do you recycle? Why do you recycle? Does it make you feel better about the consumer culture we live in? Do you know where your recycled items actually, finally end up? It might not be where you think. It might not even be as beneficial as you imagined. And in the grand scheme of it all, it might not make that much of an impact.

Most of all, Ryote gave me more food for thought - bigger fish to fry, so to speak. And I feel better about the glass going into my garbage bin - mostly. show less

The author writes in a lively and easy style. She examines the bottled water industry, how it got to be a fashion statement to drink bottled water, and how it became so much more, where many people now consume nothing but bottled water. She visits bottling plants and boreholes where the water is collected. She investigates the political, economic, and social forces behind both the bottled water movement and the anti-bottled water movement. She also investigates the public and private water show more systems that deliver tap water to Americans to determine if there is any reality to the idea that bottled water is better. The result is an indictment of the way we look at water, the way we deliver water, and the way we consume water. The book brings clarity (as much as possible) to an issue that is much more complicated than the simplistic narratives would have it. A must read. show less

It's rare for me to finish a book and carry it straightaway to my computer to order all the books in its bibliography, but in this case, that's exactly what I did. It's one of those books that helps one to understand that everything one knows about, oh, say, recycling is completely and utterly wrong. All y'all should read this one, and then tell your friends about it. Meanwhile, I'm shopping for a composting toilet.

Guaranteed to make you think about the way you consume and discard. Royte weaves her research well with her own story of examning her trash and trying to follow its journey once it leaves her curb. She ran into a lot of dead ends (visiting landfills is apparently not as easy as just driving in the gate), and discovered over and over that there are no simple answers for how to eliminate our trash responsibly. Also, no matter how close we come to Zero Waste, municipal trash only accounts for show more 2% of the waste produced--the vast, vast majority of it is produced by industry, in the process of manufacturing the goods we buy.

Garbage Land is well written and entertaining. It has already sparked several discussions in my house about how to handle our trash, of which there are sure to be more. show less