Quick Reads: “Junkyard Planet” by Adam Minter

Test Ticker

THE FIRST $500,000

This is a big one: the first time we’re asking for the donations Mother Jones relies on since joining forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting. So in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” we lay it all out for you—why we merged, how we’re stronger together, and why we’re more optimistic than normal about the work ahead. It still won’t be easy. Please help us raise the First $500,000 we need by June 22.

This is big. Mother Jones just merged with the Center for Investigative Reporting, and this is the first time we’re asking for the donations we rely on. So we lay it all out for you in “Less Dreading, More Doing,” and we need to raise the First $500,000 in online donations by June 22. It won’t be easy. Please help if you can.

Junkyard Planet

By Adam Minter

BLOOMSBURY PRESS

In this satisfying investigation-cum-travelogue, journalist Adam Minter treks around the globe to discover what actually happens to our garbage. From the posh Los Angeles offices of a trash czar who made his fortune selling American scraps overseas to a Chinese village whose sole industry is extracting wire from Christmas lights, Minter, raised amid his own family’s junkyard business, reveals a $500 billion economy built on wringing every last cent—or yuan—from the rich world’s refuse. It’s a story you don’t see in the grim e-waste stats. “If—like me—you have a television that you’d like to see recycled in the most environmentally sound manner possible, with the most material harvested from its guts,” he writes, “Hunan Province might very well be the place for it to go.”

This review originally appeared in our November/December 2013 issue of Mother Jones.