Book Review - Waste Wars
Happy 2026 to anyone who is reading my ramblings! The bulk of this article was written in January, then life happened, and I forgot to publish it. Regardless, welcome to this new installment of Book Review (which used to be called Quarterly Book Review, but I’ve given up on that long ago), where we’ll be talking about what happens to our dirty trash.
Today’s book is Alexander Clapp’s excellent Waste Wars, a lucid and somewhat hopeless description of the trash system. I picked up an English copy at an international bookstore, immediately attracted by the title and the excellent cover.
It just occurred to me that the black metal bin on the cover might not be a trash can, but one of those pen holders you can buy from Flying Tiger, Action, or any other store that sells chinesium. Whoever designed the cover did a great job!
The Book
I will admit right away that I’m not an eco-integralist, and I cannot be described as an environmentalist either. However, having always lived in the countryside, I have seen and felt the tangible effects of the industry on the environment. Take the river Po (the largest in Italy) as an example: until the 1940s, people used to bathe in it, navigate it, fish from it, and use its water for irrigation. In general, there was a lot of commercial activity around the river. Industrialization and gentrification, which were totally uncontrolled during the economic boom, used the river as a giant dumping site for sewage and industrial waste, irreversibly altering its ecosystem. Nowadays, the situation has improved a little, but touching the water can still give you rashes, and the sandy beaches that show up when in the dry season are somewhat full of junk - discarded tires, plastic bottles, and bags are not an unusual sight if you go in the vicinity of the river.
This always got me thinking - what happens when we “recycle” a bottle of water, or a plastic wrapper? What about crushed cars, medical waste, and expired paint? Have things really improved in the last few decades, or has the problem just been moved elsewhere? Waste Wars brilliantly answers that question, and gives a bleak panoramic of the history and current state of the worldwide Waste Trade (yes, as you may have thought, it’s insanely lucrative).
This book gives a brilliant description of what happens to a good portion of the waste we discard, providing a sharp, lucid insight into its afterlife. For example, while it didn’t seem weird to me that paper travels halfway across the world (imagine how much CO2 it generates!) before getting recycled, I was surprised to learn that scrap paper processing is an environmentally unfriendly process that produces toxic acid sewage and a ton of discarded plastic waste. Plastic waste? Indeed. Just think about the clear windows on cardboard food packaging, and the bubble wrap inside yellow paper envelopes - are we sure we always separate them when you discard those items? Collectively, I believe the answer is likely to be a resounding “not always”.
In Waste Wars, the author illustrates the interesting and somewhat horrifying ramifications of throwing compound packaging in the paper bin, dismantling the hulls of cruise ships to reclaim scrap metal, and sending discarded electronics to Africa to be sold on the second-hand market. While reporting with great competence about these insane and bizarre waste trades you might not even be aware of, the author employs an exquisite amount of detail; I have pictures in my mind of torn and scorched bellies of retired tankers beached like dead whales in Turkey, vast plastic ziqqurats in the middle of a lushful jungle in Indonesia, and children sorting bottle caps as an afterschool activity in Chinese warehouses to name a few - all just through Clapp’s brilliant descriptions.
Ultimately, but not least important: the book describes the political and economic (almost invariably overlapping) dynamics of the waste trade, trying to track who received or receives the trash from whom and what they were promised in return. Unsurprisingly, it usually comes down to a combination of greed, corruption, misery, and deception. Some would simply call this “business”.
Do I recommend this Book?
Absolutely, 100% - if you’re prepared to confront a harsh reality that may or may not turn what you believe you know about trash on its head. Clapp presents a bleak reality - he does not give solutions, nor “answers” - which will undoubtedly raise a lot of “dirty” questions in the reader.