Junkyard planet : travels in the billion-dollar trash trade Cover Image

Junkyard planet : travels in the billion-dollar trash trade / Adam Minter.

Minter, Adam, 1970- (Author).

Summary:

When you drop your Diet Coke can or yesterday’s newspaper in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people and places that clean up what you don’t want and turn it into something you can’t wait to buy. In Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter—veteran journalist and son of an American junkyard owner—travels deeply into a vast, often hidden, multibillion-dollar industry that’s transforming our economy and environment. Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to high-tech facilities capable of processing a jumbo jet’s worth of recyclable trash every day. Along the way, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters who've figured out how to build fortunes from what we throw away: Leonard Fritz, a young boy "grubbing" in Detroit's city dumps in the 1930s; Johnson Zeng, a former plastics engineer roaming America in search of scrap; and Homer Lai, an unassuming barber turned scrap titan in Qingyuan, China. Junkyard Planet reveals how “going green” usually means making money—and why that’s often the most sustainable choice, even when the recycling methods aren’t pretty.

Record details

ISBN: 9781608197910
ISBN: 1608197913
ISBN: 9781608197934
ISBN: 160819793X
Physical Description: 284 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Edition: First United States edition
Publisher: New York : Bloomsbury Press, 2013.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Includes index.
Formatted Contents Note:	1 Making Soup 12 -- 2 Grubbing 28 -- 3 Honey, Barley 42 -- 4 Intercontinental 60 -- 5 Backhaul 84 -- 6 Grimy Boomtown Heat 103 -- 7 Big Waste Country 116 -- 8 Homer 131 -- 9 Plastic Land 143 -- 10 Reincarnation Department 159 -- 11 Golden Ingot 182 -- 12 Coin Tower 212 -- 13 Hot Metal Flows 233 -- 14 Canton 243 -- 15 Ashes to Ashes, Junk to Junk 250.