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A well-thought-out effort by Elizabeth Royte...that takes us on an adventure of sorts from the author's home to the great outdoors...and in between.
Written like a personal diary, we start out separating household refuse from Royte's kitchen garbage can...and learn how and why each of the elements from there, the organic, the paper, glass, plastic, metal, etc., gets sorted and redirected to landfills, streams, incinerators, etc. No need to "like" garbage to enjoy the story; but having at least a minimal interest in ecology, junk, or recycling helps. The up-close details...of how, for instance, her used cardboard packaging gets separated from a muddle of home refuse, cleaned, chopped up, and repackaged to be sold to some other company that recycles and remanufactures... can get tedious. The differences among garbage collection sites and their functions seem vast, but the author's descriptive of hugely dissimilar waste facilities often sound a lot alike.
The tone of the book is uncomplicated, straight-forward, even-keeled, and factual. It's not a scientific effort; there are no important charts, formulae or survey references to dissect. There's no finger-pointing or finger-wagging. There are some dates, lots of interviews, and percents and numbers enough to make it interesting. She says she just wanted to know what's happened to her household rubbish after it goes curbside every week. --And so, author Royte takes us on a first-hand look...from kitchen, to truck, to dump, to landfills, to recycling sites, even to streams where flushing's become taboo...places where mounds of garbage gets worked on by the ton. "Garbage Land" lets us in on never-before detailed trash trails, some of which we never knew existed. Her rundown is clear and creatively simple.
Here's no high-flautin' effort that preaches recycling, a stop to global warming, or cleaning up beach-front property...but with even the slightest interest on where all that we get rid of goes and how it gets there, this book proves useful and interesting. Her choice of words, though, occasionally distracts and often prompts the reader to grab for the dictionary [Detritus, suss, neologism, arriviste, sluices, fetid...are only a few of the perplexing mystery words she uses throughout.].... On the other hand, Royte seems forever stuck on using the dead-end, pop word, "stuff," which is everywhere...as is her passion for peppering in the "s" word and the "f" word every now and then, sometimes in quotes, sometimes her own. [Didn't she think the out-of-place use of weak, puerile language might cheapen her work?]
So. What's the book's over-riding hypothesis? --Don't know. It varies per page. On the one hand, Royte's a recycler...until someone in her travels tells her the effort's in vain. However, the author (rather casually) concludes that we all need to shop less, recycle more, re-use when we can. [--Perhaps a worthy direction for the environment in any event.] Even if the reader's interest is not particularly into compost or carcinogens, he'll still come away with an improved knowledge of the subject...and a new "respect" for sludge, san workers and garbage...and its ever-increasing effects on us. Not especially deep, moving or entertaining, here's a commendable work on a complex subject that's written to understand. Informative and enlightening, it works.
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