In the mid-1980s when my husband worked The United Methodist Committee on Relief he was sent to tour the garbage dumps of Cairo to see the community that lived there, picking through the trash for things they could sell. UMCOR was working to provide clean water and health care to the community. He brought back slides that amazed me.

I grew up with “give a hoot, don’t pollute.” I remember the first Earth Day and wore the pinback button “give earth a chance” I bought that day for years. I took ecology in college and an organic gardening class as a young woman. We have recycled for fifty-one years, starting when we had to haul newspaper, glass, and cans to a monthly recycling center. We average under 4,000 miles a year on our car and have kept cars for a dozen years. We cook from scratch, grow lettuce and herbs and vegetables, and buy from the local farm market. I use old linens instead of paper towels and fabric napkins instead of paper. I have fabric shopping bags, take Styrofoam to the recycling center and plastic bags to the grocery store. I buy in glass jars whenever I can. I could go on, but the point is, I have tried to make good choices. And I know it isn’t enough.

I think of the phones and tablets and computers that died or were unsupported and replaced. Even our new bathroom scale has a rechargeable battery and a limited life span. There are the delivered packages of books and food in cardboard boxes we then recycle. The expensive supportive shoes that wear out too quickly.

We make a lot of waste. Perhaps less than some, but because of our standard of living, more than most of the world. And a lot of that waste is in landfills, preserved for decades, and in dumps across the world.

Wasteland begins on the personal level, looking at recycling and composting and food waste, the things we can sort of control. And then, it moves on to sanitation and health care, industrial and manufacturing waste and pollution of water, air and soil, forever chemicals, and finally nuclear waste.

It starts out informative and entertaining, but the end of the book, I was soberly concerned and almost hopeless. What can I as a private citizen do?

The modern economy is built on trash.

from Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
Planned obsolescence started early. The author notes that a lightbulb has continued to burn since 1901! The light bulb manufacturers gathered in 1925 and agreed to redesign the life span of the bulbs! Manufacturers need to push sales. There are the new, improved products to spur binge buying, the new clothing styles–and as a quilter, new and limited quilt fabric lines to snag buyer’s eyes.

My generation and the generation older than me have too much stuff, and it isn’t stuff wanted by our children and grandchildren–the heirloom good china, silverplate, figurines, and embroidered linens aren’t modern enough. My quilt friends despair because no one wants their “outdated” quilts that are the wrong color or style. The thrift stores will soon be deluged with our stuff. And not all of that stuff finds new homes.

If buying less stuff is a major way to fight waste, how do we buy less stuff? And if we buy less stuff, what does that do to jobs and the economy?

The author notes that some governments and major corporations are taking steps to create a “circular economy,” making packaging biodegradable or recyclable. There are ways to turn waste into biogas, fertilizer, and other useful products. Products can be harvested for needed heavy metals, gold, and even uranium. New industries to deal with our waste could provide jobs.

There is a lot to absorb in this book, and a lot to consider.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. ( )