Book Review: Garbage Land: A Dirty Investigation

GARBAGE LAND: A Dirty Investigation

Do we really know where our trash goes? Each day, tons of garbage makes the long and tedious journey to landfills around the world and we take it all for granted.  Most of us don’t understand the impact of our waste.  Billions of dollars are spent to produce aluminum cans, paper and plastic bags, and other disposables that are created primarily for our convenience.  These products sometimes serve a useful purpose for only a very short time, e.g., the millions of plastic bags in which we put our consumables, and then are thrown out into the garbage can on our street corners.  A billion more dollars are spent to process the trash and help it along its journey to settle somewhere in the ground, a compactor, or an incinerator. Although there are many books written about man-made trash, Garbage Land, by Elizabeth Royte, is one of the best books about waste because the author literally crosses boundaries to obtain information about where our trash goes, the processes and drawbacks of recycling, and possible solutions to our growing garbage problem.

Royte goes where no other author or person has gone before when she decides to follow her trash from the curb side to the landfill.  What makes her book so effective is that she is able to entertain her audience as well as educate and inform them.  Her goal is to ultimately influence citizens to be more environmentally conscientious. The book is broken into two parts; there is the entertaining adventure that Royte embarks on to find out just where her trash ends up, and there is the scientific part which talks about the technicalities of landfills and provides statistical evidence of biodegrading trash. Along the way, Royte amuses her readers by telling tales of people she has met along her expedition.  The purpose of these illustration is to show that there are many different things people try and do to reduce waste and “go green”, but we should not be lured into complacency by the new green mantra.  Much more needs to be done and Royte seeks to provide better education on this topic to the general population. Royte’s opinion is that we have already dug our graves, now were sitting in them, and it’s time to work on getting out of the grave before we are buried.

According to Royte, the entire recycling industry is a feel-good exercise that lets us purchase things we do not need and feel better about throwing them out.  She does not believe recycling has any real environmental benefits.  Her position is that recycling just gives waste hauling companies, who run the recycling programs, the opportunity to look as though they care about the environment and, in turn, make more money because no one looks below the surface of these operations to see whether they really are green. While talking to Tom Outerbridge, head of the City Green program in New York, she asks whether recycling is even cost effective.  Outerbridge states that, in one park, there used to be four garbage trucks picking up trash each day: the garbage truck; the metal, plastic and glass truck, the paper truck, and the compost truck.  The manufacturing, oil, fuel, and emissions of all these vehicles have a huge effect on the environment, not to mention all the bulldozers pushing the compost around at the facilities.  It hardly seems economical or beneficial to the environment.  This is only one of the reasons why Royte has a cynical and critical outlook on recycling.  On her journey, she stops by multiple recycling plants, tallying numbers, asking questions, and exploring the operations.  Most workers are hesitant to inform her of their disposal rituals, which makes the reader really leery of their regime.  This is exactly the point that Royte is trying to make clear; we do not know where our trash goes and disposal facilities and recycling plants will go to any length to keep that from us.

The only solution Royte has come up with is to be more aware of what we are consuming and throwing away, she does not really offer any other guidance about the topic.  In a way, Garbage Land leaves the reader feeling helpless and insignificant when it comes to ridding our planet of toxic waste.  Even Royte feels helpless after her adventures.  She explains how her friend invited her to pick up the beach on Earth Day and her first thought was “I knew too much about our combined sewage overflows by now to think that cleaning up this sandy strip would do any good. The next big rain would bring a load of trash from the sewer pipes, and a sunny day would bring beach goers who littered.” Royte’s opinion is that we don’t need better ways to get rid of things.  We need to not get rid of things, either by keeping them cycling through the system or not designing and desiring them in the first place.

In her book, Royte offers up some astonishing facts about our waste.  She incorporates statistics and scientific evidence in an effective style that does not bore or bog the reader down.  However, her passion for the topic is clearly evident.  After spending days following her trash, recyclables, and even her own feces, Royte comes to the conclusion that there is no easy solution to the growing trash problem pervading our planet.  She asserts that the best answer for improving the environment is for humanity to stop its excessive consumerism.  Royte’s obsessive compulsive attitude towards a clean plant is what makes this book so powerful.  Towards the conclusion of her book, Royte contemplates her own death and worries about her personal footprint upon planet earth.  She debates the options of cremation versus burial; “Cremation is energy intensive and polluting, especially if you have mercury in your teeth; and conventional burial pollutes groundwater with embalming fluids.”  I think that, even in the afterlife, Elizabeth Royte will be worrying about what her body is doing to the environment.

Essay#2-Book Review: A New Perspective of The World

The Botany of Desire-A Plant’s- Eye view of the World by Michael Pollan is a nonfiction novel that explains the co-evolution between the plants and humans in the unique perspective of plants instead of an ordinary human’s eyes. Pollan picks four representative domesticated plants (Apple, Tulip, Marijuana, and Potato) and tells each of their stories in turn, describing their history and how they successfully spread their genes in the world through human desires. Pollan elegantly weaves a thread that intertwines his personal story, scientific research, and historical events together. While Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire is incohesive at times, it is still worth reading because overall there are more engaging details in this travelogue that outweigh the less relevant ones.

The book has a clear division of four parts: the Sweetness of Apples, the Beauty of Tulips, the Intoxication of Marijuana, and the Control of Potatoes. Unlike any other botany books, this one starts with a unique and refreshing perspective. Michael Pollan seems to have a great talent for allegory and metaphor, and he makes these plants become real characters so that we can understand the evolution through a plant’s eye. For example, in the first story, the Sweetness of Apples, Pollan tells us how the apples entice humans, making their hard cider appeal to the settlers, and finally spread their seeds all over the world. In the second story, the Beauty of Tulips, Pollan talks about how the tulips use their special beauty to attract humans and how they use bees as proxies to choose their mates.

In addition to using information gathered from a variety of scientific books, journals and historical files, fascinating real life stories are also highlights of the book. The reason why I called this book a travelogue is that the author adds a lot of hilarious on-road stories as he guides us to trace back the plants’ evolution through a travel of history. The one I remember the most vividly is the story of John Chapman from the Sweetness of Apples chapter. John Chapman did a lot of incomprehensive things in his life. He was compared by Pollan to a Greek god Dionysus. He was the person who never wore shoes and would punish his foot if he stepped on a worm. He was also an entertainer who would press needles or hot coals into the bottom of his feet to make people laugh. However, he was also known as Johnny Appleseed in Ohio, a man who changed the fate of apples. He nurtured a lot of apple seedlings and successfully spread these seeds throughout the North American continent.

Pollan’s stories are informative as well as credible. The author did a lot of personal explorations into the history of plants. These explorations include investigations of the historical sites and events, interviews and conversations with the people who have been through that history, etc. All these investigations make the author’s opinions and conclusions trustful and interesting to read as well. For instance, in finding the history of apples, Pollan went back to central Asia (a country now called Kazakhstan) and did research on how the apple was introduced to America. After reading, I got a lot of knowledge about the history of apples and their genetic traits, and I was so drawn into his book that this information just stuck into my head naturally before I even realized. The most interesting thing is that when finishing the story, I couldn’t help myself from telling the details to friends, such as “Hey, you know that the child apple could be totally different from its parents because it carries all types of apple genes?”

Another funny aspect of research is in the last chapter, the Control of Potatoes. This chapter mainly talks about the benefits and potential hazards for transgenic plants. Pollan mentions that some corporations intend to create potatoes that have a pesticide DNA which could help kill the predators. But nobody knows what the side effects would be if people eat these transgenic products. Additionally, from the food-chain perspective, the pesticide DNA accelerates the evolution of its predator, which in turn could be strong enough to fight against effective pesticides. However, these are all assumptions. No final decision is made, and all the plans are still in the experimental stage. Does that mean that we have to give up McDonald’s French Fries? Em…we will see.

This book also has a lot of insightful thoughts. Through these four plants, Pollan has revealed the full impact of our actions on the plant society. I strongly felt the symbiosis relationship with the plants after I finished reading. The words in the epilogue that Pollan has written are the most provoking: “Chapman’s craft, his example, invites us to imagine a very different kind of story about Man and Nature, one that shrinks the distance between the two, so that we might again begin to see them for what they are and in spite of everything will always be, which is in this boat together” (245).

Unfortunately, this near perfect book still has some imperfections. Pollan provides lots of interesting information and stories in this book, but he just seems to overdo it sometimes. For instance, in the Sweetness of Apples chapter, Pollan portrays the countless weird and funny things about John Chapman. He even mentions several times his intention to marry a 10 years old farm girl. Although these details made the book enjoyable to read, they seem to have taken too much space and make the content far from its main idea, which is about the development of apples. Another example would be in the third chapter, the Intoxication of Marijuana. In this chapter, the author inserts a lot of segments over his childhood memories. One of them is about his cranky old tomcat, Frank. The author spends two paragraphs describing Frank’s habits, the things he favors to do or doesn’t. But who actually cares about the habits of Frank? These unrelated tangents go too far and they make the chapter more like a collection of the author’s childhood memories instead of a well organized story.

Overall, despite its incohesive content, Michael Pollan’s the Botany of Desire is still shining the beauty of fascinating stories and credible research. Just as Entertainment Weekly commented on the back of the book: “We can give no higher praise to the work of this superb science writer/reporter than to say that this new book is as exciting as any you’ll read.”

ESSAY 1: “The End of Nature” Book Review

For nearly a half century scientists have been arguing the merits of human environmental destruction.  More specifically the direct cause relationship that global warming would have on climate. “The End of Nature” by Bill McKibben, puts this all into perspective.  Bill McKibben outlines the global warming effect while silhouetting the human impact.  The material used still holds up to respective arguments today by the manner that the author writes.  Bill places the arguments detailed in the book as a kinda “environment devastation for dummies”.  He then entices the reader to critically disintegrate the anthropocentric view.    Basically this is the general fallacy of our society.  It is the belief humans are the central existence without respect to remainder of life on our planet.

Creatively the reading divides into sections of present and future.  He then brings the reader into a retrospect of past images throughout the reading.  This is easily identified by the chapter guidance.  The in depth part is the manner of why.  Here we have a scientific crisis that reads like a engaging story with plot divisions. Literally it makes this an easy read for one with minimal education.  Though in between the topics, one with a a heightened amount of tutelage from others can benefit as well.

Something that emphasizes the author’s point is his background.  We can pick up that the Mr. McKibben clearly uses his background for love of the outdoors.  Intelligently uses this to pull the reader along no matter if they are enclosed in a metropolis.  This book is not based solely on scientific data charts.  We do see some scientific data, but in deliberately placed amounts to overwhelm the reader like a textbook.  Mostly the author uses hard fact evidence that can be visually seen by the everyday population.  He then positions the reader for the scientific information.  For example, Bill states, “We go to the woods in part to escape.  But now there is nothing except for us and there is no escaping other people (McKibben, 1989, p.76-77).”  Furthermore he means that we can see the footprints of humanities sprawl. Knowing this makes it very difficult for the reader to discover fallacies within the argument.  Another thing the author indicates in the literature, is he has a clear investigative reporter background.  Without much of a search, Bill’s biography indicates a resume of investigative journalism.  In the book so much information has been collected to create a monumental amount of attestations.

“By the end of nature, I do not mean the end of the world. McKibben, 1989, p.7).  The purpose of the reading is to explain how nature is forever changed by mankind.  We have the capability to prevent annihilation of our planet, but the planets existence can no longer be without the significant effects of mankind.  The title is the core argument of why we must change.  The strength of this title is to fallback to the delusion that we are not having an effect on our planet.  It is less depressing and simpler to view this argument as truth.  Bill propels the ideation that the very essence of nature has changed.

The chief hazard the literature addresses is global warming.  For it is the main problem, this is not the only disaster broached.  Logging, urban sprawl, and many other environmental instigators are addressed.  The use of all the hazards compiles all of the global problems.  Additionally, Bill hands the reader all the research with minimal efforts.   Many topics are addressed by simply adding the topics together.  This shows the summation of human coercions over nature.  No one wants to believe that with all the good we are capable of, that so much bad has come about.  One way this emphasizes his points is that when the reader questions the validity of information, Bill illustrates another manmade disturbance.  We have a compilation of tenfold within several arguments of environmental problems.  It overwhelms the readers hopeful doubt that this all cannot be true.

The point of our failure to act on our environmental destruction is the notion that we do not want to change.  Mr. McKribben understands this and that is why he hopes to inspire and alarm simultaneously within this publication.  In fact he addresses this reality by emphasizing to the reader, “We’ll look for almost any reason not to change our attitudes (McKribben, 1989, p167).”  Further throughout the end of the book, Bill explains that the reason we should want to change is because nature has ended.  We should see the signs and alarms as reminders to correct our failures.

Some may say this book is has pessimistic view.  The author does not shy on this detail. As the book is designed to alarm everyone on what predicament the planet is in.  We should as a society feel the unfortunate reality.  If someone explains reality, this is not pessimism; it is how it is.  To grasp how to change course, the author expects society to not burry our heads in the sand.

Although the book uses strong scientifically emotional evidence, the author states the reality of the situation and leads the reader into a more biocentric view.  Interesting all of this books information was written out in 1989.  Nearly 20 years have passed and our collision path is the same.   The mountain of evidence of global warming support far outweighs the argument against.  There are many naysayers believing that environmental pollution is not occurring.  As future generations, no matter the outcome, look back; I believe it will be with great sadness as indeed the world has changed.    Our societies and political leaders need to wake up to this fact.  One such manner to enlighten them is to pick up this book.

Works Cited:

McKibben, Bill (1989,2006). The End of Nature. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.