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Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: sanitation garage, packer trucks, putrescible waste, New York, Fresh Kills, San Francisco (more...)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
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Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash + Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage + Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
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  • This item: Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The v-p of a New York City waste transfer station recommends, "You want to solve the garbage problem? Stop eating. Stop living." Indeed, to ponder waste disposal is to confront the very limits of our society. Where does it all go? Most of us are content to shrug off the details—as long as it's out of sight (and smell). Not so journalist Royte, whose book in some ways (including its title) echoes Fast Food Nation. That McDonald's is more immediately engaging a subject doesn't make, say, the massive, defunct Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, N.Y., any less compelling. Royte nicely balances autobiographical elements (where does her Fig Newmans carton end up, anyway?), interviews and fieldwork with more technical research. Her method yields palpable benefits, not least a wealth of vivid refuse-related slang (maggots are known as disco rice). The details unavoidably venture into the nauseating on occasion, and some might find the chemistry of trichloroethane and other toxins a bit dull. As the NIMBY logic of waste disposal forces its practitioners into secrecy, Royte is obliged to engage in some entertainingly furtive skullduggery. All in all, this is a comprehensive, readable foray into a world we'd prefer not to heed—but should.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From The New Yorker

Royte is a journalist with a nose for the "sordid afterlife" of trash, thoroughly at home in the putrid world of "Coney Island whitefish" (used condoms); "disco rice" (maggots); and—the darling of American consumer culture and the nemesis of waste activists—"Satan's resin" (plastic). Her book takes the form of a quest for the surprising final resting places of her yogurt cups, beer bottles, personal computer, and organic-fig-cookie packaging, and leads to an impassioned attack on overconsumption in America. If Royte does not quite demonstrate the muckraking skills of an Eric Schlosser in "Fast Food Nation," she does expose the feculent underside of our appetite for things and challenges her readers to disprove the resigned assessment of a former New York sanitation commissioner: "In the end, the garbage will win."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Back Bay Books (August 29, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 031615461X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0316154611
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #344,271 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #6 in  Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Civil > Environmental > Sanitary & Municipal
    #38 in  Books > Outdoors & Nature > Environment > Recycling

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More About the Author

Elizabeth Royte
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
sanitation garage, packer trucks, putrescible waste, recycling pile, tipping floor, san men, san man, diversion rate, zero waste, electronic waste, bottle bills, yard waste, demolition debris, kitchen trash, recycled content
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Fresh Kills, San Francisco, United States, Hugo Neu, New Jersey, Staten Island, Department of Sanitation, Arthur Kill, Barren Island, Owls Head, Ecology Center, Parks Department, Per Scholas, Garbage Project, Park Slope, Hunts Point, Long Island, American Ecoboard, Jepson Prairie, Jersey City, Prospect Park, Red Hook, American Ref-Fuel, Clean Water Act
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Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash
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Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash 4.3 out of 5 stars (57)
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Customer Reviews

57 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (57 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Landfills, effluvia and fun, July 21, 2005
This review is from: Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (Hardcover)
It takes a dedicated person (or a nut!) to spend time with garbage as your companion, but Elizabeth Royte has done just that, and she did so over a period of many months. Her new book, "Garbage Land", is remarkably comprehensive, thoroughly engaging and downright fun.

How many people know the names of their garbagemen? The author certainly does as she relates a time where she did a stint or two picking up garbage with the local "San Men" around her neighborhood in New York. (yes, there are women in the "pick-up" business, too) Ms. Royte duly notes the "rejectamenta" that leaves her home as she includes chapters from recycling, waste sites and sewage treatment plants, to landfills, incinerators and composting. All you've ever wanted to know about garbage and the six degrees of separation thereof, (and many things you've never cared to know) are contained in this gem of a book. To say that she has done her homework may be a bit of an understatement. Sifting through her own household garbage week after week must earn extra points as I know of no one who would ever want to undertake something like that.

While the subject is indeed a fascinating one for her and for those of us who care to read about it, Ms. Royte is surprisingly (and refreshingly) not overly judgmental. Is recycling good, for instance? Well, yes and no, she offers. She introduces differing points of view and largely lets the reader decide. I must be honest and say that there are parts of "Garbage Land" that get heavily bogged down in technical terms and statistics, (which is why it took me a period of several days to get to the end) but the final "product" is as informative a look as one will most likely get these days.

The author is good at giving some astounding facts. Referring to anthropology students digging through dry landfills she says, "forty-year-old hot dogs look just like the ones currently sold in the Times Square subway station. Seventy-year-old newspapers can still be read. Cling Wrap still clings". I laughed out loud when she mentioned that "as late as 1892, a hundred thousand pigs roamed New York City's streets, feasting on scraps tossed out doors and windows by the working poor"..... Times may have changed but garbage is still garbage.

Elizabeth Royte has written a terrific book but she has also done a great service in enlightening us in an area of our lives about which most of us would rather not know. It is an eye-opener as well as a nose-opener. I highly recommend it.
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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling & Appalling -- a Must Read , July 16, 2005
This review is from: Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (Hardcover)
I picked up this book the day it came out and found it so compelling -- and mind curdling -- that I couldn't put it down. I took it home and read it from cover to cover. Royte shows formidable skills as interviewer, detective, researcher and wordsmith. I admire her persistence in getting this story and telling it well. I rate it 5 stars -- right up there with several other page-turning, brilliantly researched exposes -- "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser, "Toxic Sludge is Good for You" by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton and "The Whole Soy Story:The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food" by Kaayla Daniel. I cannot recommend this book enough.
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32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Waste Not, Want Not, July 19, 2005
By Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash (Hardcover)
Elizabeth Royte's Garbage Land is one woman's journey to find out where her waste goes. She follows her putrescibles to the landfills, her recyclables to recovery facilities, and even tracks her poop all the way to the sewage treatment plant and beyond. She discovers that there are no easy answers and that consuming less is the best answer to the waste problem. The reason that I resonate so strongly with Garbage Land is that since the late `80s my wife and I have been on a quest to reduce, reuse, and recycle to the max [although I participated in the recycling program in Forest Hills, Pennsylvania when I was a teen in the `70s] and have run into many of the problems encountered by Royte. Even though Whittier, California now uses the 3 barrel system [yard waste, recyclables, and trash, with the trash barrel being much smaller than the other two], we still find the level of our trash disconcerting AND we live over the hill from the Puente Hills landfill, now the largest sanitary landfill in the world [enlarging the landfill has been mitigated by setting aside or buying land for parks in the hills, so it hasn't been a total waste]. I agree with the previous reviewer's comparison to Fast Food Nation - the books share a similar feel, although I find this one even lower key in the polemics department. I finished the book over the weekend while I was at a wedding in Mendocino County. The couple was married at the oldest organic winery in the country and their house is equipped with a composting toilet - I ended up feeling like a piker when it came to the 3 R's of waste. Garbage Land is food for thought for anybody thinking about their own impact on the planet.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The best environmental book I've read so far
A few years ago I began research for a book. It contained environmental themes, mostly dealing with trash. Read more
Published 3 months ago by K. Wilson

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you need to know about waste
The lesson that I learned from this book is: don't buy stuff! if you do, then check used stuff (craigslist, freecycle, thrift shops) first. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lisa B.

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it!
This book is actually a real page turner. It's changed the way I think about so many ordinary and mundane things, like recycling a beer can, throwing out leftovers, or... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Kevin Strano

4.0 out of 5 stars A less glamorous: All the President's Men
What would you get if your doused All The President's Men, with sweet smelling sludge? The result would probably resemble Elizabeth Royte's epic presentation of filth, depicting... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Spencer

1.0 out of 5 stars poorly researched
I found this book to be a very poorly researched, and equally poorly written look at garbage...A very cursory examination of its topic... Read more
Published 12 months ago by charles tunis

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for those who throw away trash... EVERYONE!
Garbage Land is a well researched look into the world of waste handling. The book not only deals with garbage sent to landfills but also recycling both in the US and around the... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Deep Roots

3.0 out of 5 stars Trash Tracking Makes For Interesting Garbage

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. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Ink & Penner

4.0 out of 5 stars Garbage Land Is A Keeper
What a great, quirky book. I have worked in the Waste Management field for a number of years, and Ms. Royte got it right with this book. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Glenn Gallagher

5.0 out of 5 stars FASCINATING
Just by becoming AWARE of the lingering, never to completely escape from PROBLEM of garbage--OUR garbage--is a good thing, a wondrous good thing. Read more
Published 16 months ago by P. Houston

5.0 out of 5 stars It's a shame the way Detritus........
This very well- written and well-researched book talks about how landfills have poisoned the earth, how some fertilizer, labeled "organic" is full of toxins, dioxins, heavy metals... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Ace

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