Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash

I absolutely adored this book. While it may seem to focus on the history of trash, it was so fascinating for many different reasons! It has the environmental sustainability perspective, but not so much that it was overwhelming or ignored other aspects of the history. While reading i ended up researching tons of repair techniques that have been falling out of use, female authors, old companies and their business models, political figures i had never known about outside of their major political accomplishments, the impacts of war and economic events on a societal and individual level, and so much more. This book has so much to offer beyond what I expected. In fact, I had to take a week to digest and research each chapter before I was fully satisfied and could move on the the next section. Of course, you don’t have to take as much time as I did or even do that much research, but I felt that it really brought this book to life.

Anyone looking to understand WHY we waste in our current day and age need look no further than this exceptionally well researched and written social history of trash. Totally captivating to me who admittedly hates to waste, but I'm sure of interest to a broad swath of consumers who enjoy history and insights into our modern lifestyles. I garnered many insights for WeHateToWaste.com, a global community that I manage, about what worked in the past and why to incentivize people to reduce waste or to collect it for economic purposes, and how these same strategies might be updated for the future.

I liked the first chapter about reworking clothing to extend its life. It was fascinating to think of women doing all of this work by hand! And then....each chapter got longer and more bogged down with endless and repetitive details. Clearly the author did a massive amount of research, but why wasn't it edited? It wasn't quite scholarly, but it had way too much dry factual information to be entertaining.

As a guy who works in the environmental field (I am a geologist) I found this book absolutely fascinating. It reveals things about life in the past that I could never have imagined. Recycling is NOT new...its old. We just abandoned the practice after WWII and became a throw-away society.

The extent of research is impressive. And the presentation is expressive, not just factual.A great book that gives us a perspective of the past, and by juxtaposition, a penetratinglook at what the present means re. our values and our environment.

A really interesting read that explains how we got to where we are today with regards to our trash. It was fascinating to learn how industrialisation has changed how we relate to trash.

This is a great book which I have lent to more people than other book I can remember. If you are big on recycling, you be fascinated by all of the stories about recycling.

Seems like the level of detail got to the point of saying the same thing, just worded differently.