Waste Wars

Reviews

“Briskly paced and filled with colorful and dubious characters worthy of the true crime book it is, Waste Wars inverts the standard story of extractive capitalism to focus on the globalized trillion-dollar waste disposal industry that each year moves billions of tons of toxic garbage from the Global North to the Global South. A quintessential story of deviant globalization, Waste Wars depicts the United States as an empire of plastic, one that deployed disposable mass consumerism as a way to beat the Soviets in the Cold War, only to extend it down to the present day into a structure of globalized overconsumption and wanton disposal that threatens to devour the entire planet, with the poor countries and peoples of the Global South as its first victims.”—Nils Gilman, author of Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century “In the seconds it has taken you to scan the few lines of this blurb, tens of thousands of plastic bottles have been discarded. Pause to consider that awesome fact for a moment and they are followed by tens of thousands more. One million per minute, every minute, every hour of every day. We are burying our planet in trash, which thanks to the plastic revolution will outlive us by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years. Where does all this waste go? The fact that this shocking disaster is largely invisible in the rich world is no accident. As Alexander Clapp shows, it is the result of a ghastly form of globalization that dumps the garbage of the rich on the poor. A mind-altering and unforgettable read, Clapp has written an essential and deeply disturbing book.”—Adam Tooze, author of Crashed "Waste Wars cracks open standard recycling rhetoric to expose the toxic truths within. No study of global inequality is complete without the information in this excellent book."—Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World “Superb reporting that definitively answers the question we really never ask: where on earth does all that stuff go when we're done with it? This majestic account will transform the way you look at trash—and hopefully it will spur some real change at the highest levels.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “Waste Wars is an infuriating, eye-opening and spell-binding account of the globally uneven and unjust politics of trash. Clapp shows how the rubbish the affluent people of rich countries produce travels to poorer countries for processing, creating mountains of toxic waste in the global South, or whirlpools of plastic in our oceans. A must-read for those concerned with the health and hygiene not only of the planet, but also of the people who populate it!”—Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade “Waste Wars is the Star Wars of trash, a witty and brave account of Alexander Clapp’s journey into the underbelly of modern life. You’ll meet garbage-spotting drones, journalists who register pet fish as waste brokers, and go on a hunt for the El Dorado of poison. As Clapp explains, we live in a world where our ability to create garbage has surpassed Earth’s ability to generate life. The consequences are terrifying, but Clapp’s great book somehow leaves you awe-inspired by the sheer outrageousness of the human ingenuity that has created this toxic mess.”—Jeff Goodell, author of the New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First "Since its inception centuries ago, the global economy has consisted of complex commodity chains: extracting, transporting, manufacturing, distributing, profiting. Only very recently in historical times have we added the ‘downstream’ chains, dumping the resultant consumer waste — somewhere, somehow. In rich countries, we pay high municipal fees for the removal of our refuse. We may even feel good about sorting to recycle it. Does this do any good? If the news is really so bad, better that someone as sober and courageous as Alexander Clapp delivers it to us."—Georgi Derluguian, author of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Caucasus "Waste Wars is perhaps the most comprehensive indictment of consumer capitalism since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Fearless as he travels to some of the least appealing places on earth, Alexander Clapp lifts the heavy stones of green washing to reveal the literal and moral filth that Western societies have been dumping on their poorer cousins in Latin America, Africa, and Asia for decades. Always engagingly written with jaw-dropping anthropological detail, Clapp introduces us to courageous tragic characters compelled to clean up the mess of Western material avarice from the bizarre electronic slums of Ghana to the deathyards breaking up ships in Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. If you wish to know how the world really works, read this book."—Misha Glenny, author of McMafia Expand reviews