Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

from gbelik

I received a free review copy of this book. This book was clearly a labor of love for its author, whose family ran a junkyard and who has been employed as a journalist for scrap and recycling magazines. And it is a joy to read. If you love episodes of "How It's Made" or are one of those people wh...

from Muir_Alex

This book was enlightening at the very least! At its best, it is a solid argument for why we should all focus on reducing and reusing waste products before we try to recycle. Minter does a great job at weaving together the American and Chinese sides of the scrap business, and thoroughly describes...

from patrickgarson

Minter, son of a scrap-man, and one of the few journalists working exclusively on recycling issues, has written a fascinating, inspiring, disturbing, and at times almost magical exploration of the world of recycling. It's a complex story, and it pulls in stories about globalisation, technology, e...

from Stbalbach

I assumed Junkyard Planet would be by a journalist who explores what happens to trash with an angle on the environment. Adam Minter is a journalist, but he works for a recycling industry trade magazine, and grew up in a family of junk dealers. He is an insider with a career reporting on recycling...

from ohernaes

A fascinating account of the globalzed trade in junk. Illustrates how trade connects parts of the world with different specializations. Repeatedly comes back to the fact that the trash trade has an undeservedly bad reputation: Minter several times acknowledges that there are problems with polluti...