The Trash is Piling Up

By HEATHER SEGGEL

“Throwaway Nation: The Ugly Truth About American Garbage” (Rowman & Littlefield) delivers what the title promises. It’s a chunky book full of short chapters describing just how much of the earth (and atmosphere) we have managed to pollute. Author and journalist Jeff Dondero injects dry humor and some interesting trivia into the book, and each chapter has suggested actions for trying to reverse the trend toward disposability, but the news is overwhelmingly not good.

The book opens with a brief history of the concept of “litter,” and it’s an eye-opener. After the post-WWII boom in US development, garbage began accumulating rapidly and had to be taken more seriously as a problem. By the 1950’s the businesses that made product packaging had a clever fix: “Nonrenewable” (that is, disposable) packaging, and a snarky call-out to “litterbugs” to clean up after themselves. While they were the ones making items that could only be thrown away, not reused or recycled, the onus was somehow on individuals to hold back the tide of trash that followed.

From there, Dondero looks at the ways we’ve trashed the Earth, seas, air, and outer space, and then broadens the discussion to include pet waste, government waste, and even the wasted labor in a standard 40-hour work week. The writing is meticulously researched; reference notes are included at the end of each chapter, an odd choice, but they offer numerous avenues for further research and study within a category. That organization, and the lack of an overarching theme beyond “Garbage bad,” make “Throwaway Nation” feel more like a textbook than a regular work of narrative nonfiction. Considering how much we need to learn and take on to solve these problems, that’s not such a bad thing.

Suggestions at the end of each chapter offer actions individuals can take to try to help, but while those are important, we know the problem we’re facing is not one we can solve one soda can at a time. If products were less disposable there would be less litter; the individual can’t be held solely responsible in those cases. I was reminded of Elizabeth Warren’s tart response to a question about plastic straw bans at CNN’s climate town hall event. While acknowledging there’s plenty that people can do, she also dropped an uncomfortable truth bomb: “Understand, this is exactly what the fossil-fuel industry hopes we’re all talking about. They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your light bulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers, when 70 percent of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.” True enough, but also overwhelming to contemplate; it makes sense that we get passionate about the minutiae when so little is directly in our control.

The final chapter is about treasures found in trash piles or unintentionally lost in them. While it’s out of step with the book’s other chapters, it’s a good reminder that individual waste often happens in moments of mindlessness. Dondero includes another anomalous chapter, calling out charity as wasteful; as he rather bluntly puts it, “Philanthropy is undemocratic.” It’s an interesting point; funneling resources down to the needy denies them much choice in what they’re given, and of course the administrative costs of nonprofits can be lean or rich with lard. He goes on to list reasons why one might want to give cash to the homeless despite entreaties to offer a “hand up, not a handout.” My own inclination is to steer people to local resources, but it was a surprise to find this point made in a book about trash, when homeless encampments create mountains of it and waste management programs are only just beginning to work with residents to give them options for safe disposal.

Consider reading “Throwaway Nation” with a group and committing to take a few actions in each category. Or go further and commit to one small (personal) and one large (petition, demonstration, or other outreach) action to do in tandem. There’s so much information collected in this one volume, it would be terrible to let it all go to waste. Learning about the scope of the problem can stoke the energy needed to tackle it head on.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2020

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