Garbage Land: On the Secret

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (2005), Elizabeth Royte uses her scientific training and her writing talent to present a story that would hardly seem likely to make for interesting reading, at least not to anybody besides an environmental engineer: the story of modern waste disposal. The author essentially accomplishes two specific tasks in her writing: first, she manages to describe the various processes and mechanisms that are relied upon to spare the average contemporary family from having to deal directly with the garbage produced in their home; second, she lays out the important argument for reducing waste for environmental reasons.

Royte provides an insight that few people have ever thought about or wanted, at least before the popularity of television shows such as the Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs. Purely from an industrial or engineering perspective, Royte describes the technical aspects of the modern waste disposal system that are beautiful in their efficiency and in their capacity, if not in their aesthetics. Royte's research exposes her to the daily lives of workers whose vocational environment would be a nightmare to many others. Some of them are so accustomed to their work that they no longer even seem to notice that they are working (literally) in feces and other noxious substances.

The author introduces readers to the mind-boggling magnitude of the volume of waste actually produced in the United States and to the large-scale industrial processes and technologies necessary to ensure that the general public is almost completely insulated from it. In that respect, she also reminds the reader how different a situation residents of big cities, only a century ago when, in New York City, for example, sidewalks were often completely un-passable, at least without risk of becoming soiled and ruining one's clothes walking only a few blocks. However, the author devotes the other major focus of her book to the excessive consumption and waste that unnecessarily increase the amount of garbage that society must deal with.

In that regard, the author provides an awareness that many readers might have lacked into the imperfect nature of waste disposal from two perspectives: first, she describes the degree to which even the highly regulated approved methods of storing waste are susceptible to leakage and to exposing society to dangerous chemicals; second, she explains that certain forms of mass consumption result in pollution that cannot be mitigated even by the most sophisticated waste disposal methods. For example, in the case of ordinary shoes, she writes:

" & #8230;conventional rubber soles are stabilized with lead that degrades into the atmosphere and soil as the shoe is worn. Rain sluices this lead dust into sewers, and thence into sludge bound for agricultural fields. According to the National Park Service, which has more than a passing interest in manmade stuff that lies around on the ground, leather shoes abandoned in the backcountry last up to fifty years (if they aren't eaten, one presumes), and rubber boot soles go another thirty."