Adam Minter’s Junkyard Planet Comes to the UK

Posted: January 11th, 2014 | No Comments »

Adam Minter’s Junkyard Planet is a great read and the culmination of many years research and journalism (combined with a touch of obsession about rubbish). I’ve followed Adam’s writing from Shanghai for many years, where he’s based. I don’t think we ever actually met but anyway…his book tour is bringing him to London and here’s a few dates for your diary if you’re around in London or Cambridge….I’ve always wondered if his favourite book as a child was Stig of the Dump ?? Seems like the ideal present for Adam!

January 16, 2014, 6:30 PM
Young China Watchers hosts “The Trans-Pacific Trash Trade” with Adam Minter, Committee Room 20, House of Commons, Parliament, London, UK
Please contact Young China Watchers directly for registration.

 

January 17, 2014, 5:00 PM
A Gates Fireside on the Global Recycling Trade, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, Location TBA.

 

January 20, 2014, 6:30 PM
The Royal Geographic Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London, UK
Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Secret Trash Trade (Open to RGS members and Fellows, only).

More on Junkyard Planet:

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.

With unmatched access to and insight on the junk trade, and the explanatory gifts and an eye for detail worthy of a John McPhee or William Langewiesche, Minter traces the export of America’s recyclables and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. What emerges is an engaging, colorful, and sometimes troubling tale of consumption, innovation, and the ascent of a developing world that recognizes value where Americans don’t. Junkyard Planet reveals that we might need to learn a smarter way to take out the trash.

And more on Stig of the Dump (as it brought back memories of Jackanory)

Stig is a caveman. He lives at the bottom of the old chalk pit close to Barney’s grandparents’ house. Since the chalk pit is no longer used, people throw all their old junk away down there. So it is rather an interesting place to build a den. Barney falls over the edge of the quarry and tumbles down through the roof of Stig’s den. When he looks round, there’s Stig, with his shaggy black hair and bright black eyes. Barney and Stig get on rather well together. They have to manage without language, of course, but that doesn’t seem to stop them. Stig’s den is a brilliant place built out of discarded rubbish. Stig is Barney’s secret friend, not because Barney doesn’t tell anyone, but because no-one really believes that Stig is real. They have a great time, improving Stig’s den, collecting firewood, going hunting, and even catching some burglars who break into Barney’s grandparents’ house. It’s really a collection of short-story adventures. We know that Stig is a caveman, and really Barney hardly seems to give any thought to where Stig has come from until the end of the book. Then, during a very hot, sultry mid-summer’s night, when Barney and his sister Lou can’t sleep, they find themselves transported back in time and out onto the downs. To their surprise, they meet Stig, back with his own people, engaged in the construction of four gigantic standing stones. They spend a magical night camping out with the people of Stig’s tribe, and helping to shift the final stone into position before sunrise. Has Stig found a way to travel backwards and forwards in time, or is it as much a mystery to Stig as it is to Barney and Lou?

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