The author talks some about the people he meets in the garbage business, but thankfully that didn't ruin the book for me. One man who wondered just what happened to the rubbish he and his family were creating was Oliver Franklin-Wallis, who decided to follow his nose for a story.

Copperhead’s job involves sorting through nappy-strewn rubbish and the potentially lethal task of draining the acid out of old car batteries. While it's maybe not the cutest topic, it was fascinating to learn about and it's impossible to ignore in the age of increasing climate crisis.Even though I'm withholding the last star because the author didn't quite succeed in this (and when he didn't, he stumbled pretty hard), I particularly appreciated the mostly nuanced takes on good and bad practices, and the repercussions of policy and strategy changes that are almost never thoroughly thought through (yeah, sorry about that, I couldn't help myself.

Sewage flooding our rivers, plastics in ours oceans, rivers, bodies; rubbish shipped abroad and inflicted on the world’s poor. Additionally, his proposed solutions are well considered, including suggestions to “make greenwashing illegal” and hold companies responsible for the waste they produce, no matter where it ends up. This niggle aside, the book is well written and few readers are likely to be left unaffected by its findings. On the way, we discover the corporate greenwashing that started the recycling movement; the dark truth behind our second-hand donations; and come face to face with the 10,000-year legacy of our nuclear waste.

It is also home to some terrifying statistics: the four trillion plastic cigarette filters flicked to the ground and stamped out annually; the 20,000 plastic bottles sold every second; the 2kg of waste produced every day by the average American. He has appeared on TV, radio and podcasts, including the WIRED podcast, BBC Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, and BBC World Service. One piece of electronic equipment can contain as many as sixty elements - not only commodities like iron, copper, aluminum, but a host of rare earth metals including cobalt, neodymium, and tantalum, which are used in everything from motherboards to gyroscopic sensors. Since I deal with the transfer and treatment of waste daily because of my job, I personally found it an interesting and informative read. It might be burned, buried, reconstituted or sent on an expedition to new lands, where it might be burned, buried or reconstituted.

Here’s this book’s takeaway: Do what we as consumers can do and should do to keep Our Mother safe and healthy - even though it may not do any good. It is demoralizing and exhausting knowing this problem exists and is a threat yet being unable to do anything about it on the personal level.

I loved learning where all our trash ends up, be it textiles, food, industrial waste, chemical waste, electronics, packaging, and more. Its rare that I would leave such a detailed review, but I find it necessary to do anything on my part to convince you to read this book as well. Multiply by the sheer quantity of devices, and the impact is vast: a single recycler in China, GEM, produces more cobalt than the country’s mines each year. And "Wasteland" is worth a read, it's one of the best books I've read on waste and our broken, often non-existent, systems to deal with it. You have to admire Franklin-Wallis’s constitution as he visits a giant recycling plant in Essex, an energy-from-waste plant in Avonmouth and a sewage plant in Isleworth before venturing to India to scale the Ghazipur landfill mountain and endure the delights of one of Kanpur’s tanneries – notoriously grim and visceral places.