Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage

The U.S. is the top producer of garbage on the planet, generating 30% of the world's trash and throwing out 1600 pounds per American per year - but what happens to garbage after it's in the trash? GONE TOMORROW: THE HIDDEN LIFE OF GARBAGE focuses on the answers to this question, providing journalist Heather Rogers' history of rubbish handling from the 1800s to modern times and reviewing the politics and social issues revolving around trash management policies. Technological transformations affected the nature and quantity of household garbage, postwar innovations handled more volume, and industry changes changed the nature and motivation of cartels handling garbage: GONE TOMORROW explores all these facets and more. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

This book has had a profound effect on my growing enlightenment about sustainability. Heather Rogers traces the history of waste disposal, from the days when everything was used and re-used (and then scavenged and used again), to the dawn of mass production and organized waste disposal, where there is little if any economic incentive to minimize manufacturing waste. She argues convincingly that our consumerist economy is literally built on trash. If you think global warming and altered ocean chemistry are legitimate threats to our childrens' futures, then you should add this book to your must-read list.

Every now and then a book or two comes along that makes me want to get on the phone to friends or email friends to tell them they must read the book. This happened this past week when Gone Tomorrow the Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers arrived at my cottage. We are a homeschooling family who as a project spent a year looking at what we buy and why and what happens to what we put out for recycling and refuge pick up, as well as what gets flushed or composted. So this book became part of our curriculum. In less than three months our water usage dropped 60%, and the garbage can went from being overflowing to being placed out once a month and then with very little in it. Am now considering cancelling the service when the contract is up. And going in with three other neighbors and combining what little we all have and sharing the cost. Recently someone asked me why we don't put our recycling bins out or rarely put the garbage container out and we had to explain that just because we have them doesn't mean we have to fill them and put them out every week. And this is where the book is so on target when talking about how there is a downsize to the whole recycling area. It is one of those things that came about because of good intentions, but hasn't helped stop people from actually buying stuff. Also in target is how the author says that often the recyclable get dumped in with the regular trash pick up because there is no local market for the items. This is what we discovered one morning when we saw the garbage truck picking up the recycling bins and garbage at the same time, not separately. Even more so now that gas prices have gone up and garbage companies cant raise prices so they dump everything at once. So we simply save the glass and what aluminum items we have and make a run to the real recycling center where we also make some extra money. Much like I did as a kid when I would eagerly walk the roads on the island we lived on in summer to gather up the cans and bottles the tourists left behind, to turn in for money. The author also does a great job in explaining how packaging of products is overdone, but also done because we live in a highly suit happy society. So having that extra foil safety cap on a bottle of pills, or secure bag around the lettuce raise the cost of items as well as add to landfills. Around here Styrofoam has to be put out with regular garbage not with recyclables. Same with those pesky popcorn packing things. On page 207 the author writes about an area in Oakland, California where the Batcave garden sits. While it may not be for everyone there is enough helpful can do information from this group that most Americans could adopt that would cut down drastically on what they buy and then what they discard. Heck most Americans would do better with less lawn to cut and more vegetables being planted that could save on food costs as well on garbage since edibles are compostable. The author provides so much infor

In this incredibly well researched and clearly written social history of rubbish, Rogers does 3 things (at least). 1. Denormalizes waste: It is a serious myth that the garbage we live with and create today has always existed. This historical presentation shows us the ways in which people had to be TAUGHT to waste. 2. Teaches the concept of Political Economy through the lens of something that we all touch but rarely think about. There is a flawed logic that organizes our production and consumption patterns and I have never understood it so well than through Rogers tale-telling. 3. Implicates the industrial Producers and their accompanying PR machines as the primary perpetrators - not the litter-bug consumers that we've all been taught to blame. (Plus the book taught me about 10 synonyms for garbage that I never knew existed. ) "The Golden Age of Waste" is by far the most enlightening chapter in the book. The rest of the chapters successfully sandwich this middle chapter to help us make sense of the economic, historical and cultural logic's that have created the trash that surrounds us today. The critique of corporate green-washing is also particularly helpful for anyone who is slightly suspicious of the re-branding efforts that have reconfigured the public face of many corporations in the last 20 years but not erased any of their polluting tendencies. I have not read a book in a long time that actually found such relevance in my daily life. Garbage: you see it, live with it and make decisions about it every single day - so it is mandatory to finally have this tool kit to help us understand how it got into our collective lives.

When I purchased this book, I thought it might add to my store of trivia knowlege, sort of a fun little look at something most of us never think about. I expected to describe it with words like "nifty." This book was not what I expected, and I'm glad. This book was an engrossing discussion of how the nature and quantity of consumer garbage (as opposed to industrial waste) has changed. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution and moving up through today, this book considers the ways in which government policy and the corporate profit motive create a socity in which garbage - lots and lots of garbage - is inevitable, and why even the best-intentioned efforts at recycling barely make a dent in the mountain of trash. I have a professional background in economics, and so I got a great deal out of some of Rogers' arguements that were based in economic theory. However, her simple, straightforward style makes it easy for anyone to follow her reasoning. The subtitle, The Hidden Life of Garbage, was misleading. Perhaps a better subtitle might have been The History and Social Implications of Garbage. Although that sounds a bit scholarly, this book, while extremely well researched, did not read at all like a textbook. Rather it was an approachable discussion of why garbage occurs and why the current solutions are not working. A must-read for anyone who cares about planet Earth, whether they are chaining themselves to trees or just recycling their soda can!