Adam Minter
Adam Minter is a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion where he writes about China, technology, and the environment. He is the author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, a critically-acclaimed bestselling insider’s account of the hidden world of globalized recycling, and the forthcoming Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale. Adam has covered the global recycling industry for almost two decades. In 2002, he began a series of groundbreaking investigative pieces on China’s emerging recycling industries for Scrap and Recycling International. Since then, he has been cited, quoted, and interviewed on recycling and waste by a range of international media, most recently The New York Times, Vice, NPR, BBC, The Huffington Post, and CBC. He regularly speaks to groups about the global waste and recycling trade including colleges, universities, trade groups, TEDx, and an invited lecture to the Royal Geographic Society in London.
3 Books Written
Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade
by Adam Minter
Rating: 4.2 ⭐
• 2 recommendations ❤️
How can garbage turn into gold? What does recycling have to do with globalization? Where does all that stuff we throw away go, anyway? 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, 500-billion-dollar industry that's transforming our economy and environment.Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to recycling factories capable of processing a jumbo jet's worth of trash every day. Along the way, we meet an international cast of characters who have figured out how to squeeze Silicon Valley-scale fortunes from what we all throw away. 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.With unmatched access to and insight on the waste industry, and the explanatory gifts and an eye for detail worthy of a John McPhee or William Langewiesche, Minter traces the export of America's garbage and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. What emerges is an engaging, colorful, and sometimes troubling tale of how the way we consume and discard stuff brings home the ascent of a developing world that recognizes value where Americans don't. Junkyard Planet reveals that Americans might need to learn a smarter way to take out the trash.
When you drop a box of unwanted items off at the local thrift store, where do they go? Probably across the country--or even halfway across the world--to people and places eager to reuse what you don’t want.In Secondhand, Adam Minter delves into the vast, multibillion-dollar industry that resells used stuff around the world. He follows the trail of unwanted objects from the closets, garages, and storage units of Middle America to huge used-goods markets in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Ghana, India, Malaysia, and beyond. Secondhand takes us through the often painful and heartbreaking process of cleaning out a lifetime’s worth of possessions and shows that used stuff still has a place in a world that values the new and shiny--it entertains us, makes fortunes, fulfills needs, and transforms the way we live and work.
