Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade

This one had some very valuable information. It's definitely worth reading! To begin, I'd like to mention the (very few) negatives in the book: First, the author covers a wide area, however, he misses one of the great re-cycling activities of our time, ship breaking. I do wish that he had visited the ship breaking facility at Alang as this would have been an extremely worthwhile addition to the book. Second, he mentions "reduce, reuse, recycle," but he doesn't go into the subjects of reduce & reuse very much. Both of these are minor gripes and only take away from the book, what might have been valuable extra information. Perhaps the reduce & reuse portions of the phrase can be the genesis of another (most welcome) book (more on this below). The author grew up in a scrap yard in Minneapolis. I am slightly familiar with some of the historical topics that he mentioned as I have lived in the Twin Cities for the past 30+ years. There are two that might be of interest to the readers of this book. The first is NIMBY. In the late '90s a scrap company wished to install a Konderator metal shredder along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. This unit is similar to the ones mentioned in the book. The screaming over the installation of this unit was legion. The second is the scourge of copper harvesting from vacant and abandoned homes. I have seen 1/2 dozen of these over the past 3 years in Minneapolis alone. With the price of copper hitting highs, it has become almost expected to find vacant homes in the seedier parts of Minneapolis to have their copper stripped. // This is not unique. In the late '60s & early '70s, the price of copper also spiked. My father brought home a knife that had been almost burned through. When asked about it, he responded, "The police were called to the bridge house of one of the bridges across the Chicago River. A resident reported seeing a man in flames running and jumping into the river. Upon investigation, the police reported that someone had attempted to strip the copper buss bars that ran the DC motors used to lift the draw bridge! All that they found was a nick in the buss bar and the nearly melted knife." // So far as recycling goes, it's a great read on the scrap industry. It refutes the concept of "dumping" with regard to third world economies. Those folks desperately *want* the scrap. That said, the recycling is extremely unhealthy; however, it will be done as sourced from the USA, or other nations. It cannot be stopped. The author then goes into the technological changes in the recycling of cast off material (both large scale items like autos and what we call eWaste, electronics). All in all, worth your time and money. Additional note: The author mentioned the old mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle." Here are some things to think about: 1) Reduce: We will need to re-evaluate our economy of general convenience. It the 1950s, we had returnable milk, soda, and beer bottles. The beer bottles, last to go away, disappeared in the late '80s & early '90s. To reduce, we need to revert to an economy that can again use returnable containers. 2) Reuse (re-purpose): My favorite example of this is the old San Miguel beer bottles in the Philippines. When they get to a certain age, they no longer are used for beer. they are sold off (or diverted) to bottles of fish sauce and sold in the local stores. (And, as a last resort, are broken up into sharp shards. Then set in cement on the top of cement block walls as deterrents to cat burglars.) There are many other examples in the third world, and a smaller bunch in the USA. 3) Recycle: The theme of the book. Reduce the items to component parts and re-introduce the (newly made) raw materials back into the manufacturing stream. Plastic milk bottles to composite plastic deck boards, for example. To this, I would like to add that we-all have also missed a bet. It should be, "Reduce, repair, reuse, and finally recycle." We seem to be using more & more items that are basically sealed units. Example: Look at tablets and cell phones. While it is advantageous to have the batteries soldered in place, it only means that the unit will be dumped when the battery dies. And, yes, I understand that a 2-year old tablet, or cell phone, is completely obsolete in today's market. But, come on folks, what about all of the other things we toss in the trash? Finally, in the 19th century, old clothes and scrap cloth were cut up and re-sewn into bed quilts. In the 21st century, old cell phones are stripped of their chips, which are reprogrammed and put into electronic toys. All I can say is that I look back with a heavy heart to my grandmother's button box and her string drawer. Some personal examples (just for fun): 1) My Maytag washing machine broke down (PERISH THE THOUGHT!). The (former) Maytag Repairman stated that I could quite easily do the repair myself. He sold me the replacement part (a re-circulating pump motor) and after a bit of putzing, I had it installed & the machine up and running. The motor was a sealed unit & went into the recycling bin. 2) My front deck (being 35 years old) was suffering from rotting deck boards. I removed the boards & replaced them; however, i didn't toss the old boards in the trash. I de-nailed them & tossed the nails in the recycling bin. Then I trimmed off the rotten parts. I cut them up & re-assembled them as garden benches. About 70% of the lumber was salvaged. At $0.50~$1.00/linear foot, that cedar (once 2x6, now trimmed to 2x4) was still quite valuable.

The stories about the scrap industry are very good and provided a lot of insight I had not picked up on before. That was the good. The bad is Minter's own goofy world view. He goes out of his way to talk about the scrap industry in a good and in my opinion well deserved light, while slamming the primary metals industry. For instance he has a short section where he visits an environmentalist in Minnesota who suggests that the entire Boundary Waters region is on the brink of collapsing into a giant sink hole due to a well known and welll studied, and extremely predictable phenomena called mine subsidence that is only an issue in very shallow mines, as if it is unknown, ignored, and mysterious. Compared to the reporting on the scrap industry, the treatment of mining is nothing short of shameful and losuy reporting. Unlike a scrap yard which Minter describes even his own family business moving out of town, mines are stuck in one spot, bound by the peculariaty of the Earth itself and the properties that make one small area worth mining. They must remain there for frequently decades, having a huge influence on the nearby communities, and any that have been in operation at least in the first world in the last 50 years are required to clean things up afterwards. The mine where I currently work at for instance must create 3 acres of wetlands for every acre disturbed according to their permits. Water quality and quantities must be continuously monitored, and any issues must be fixed. Discharges are far cleaner than the local environment, and in some cases the environmental impact of water that is too clean has been called into question. Far be it for any of the operations Minter describes to meet those kind of regulations. I originally picked up Minter's book because my profession (mineral processing) is trained in physical separation of materials. It doesn't matter if the starting material is rock out of a mine or pulling water out of tomato paste to make ketchup, or separating scrap metals. The principles are the same. In this respect, Minter's book is really good, although the major focus is on China and other places where mechanical sorting systems are comparatively rare. Mining itself for the most oart only got out of the hand sorting business about 60 years ago, though it still goes on for some things. One of my first jobs was working in a quarry operation and pulling wood and metal contaminants out of a stream of recycled, crushed rock from an old mining operation, in the US in 1996 so I have personal experience with what Minter describes. I was also dismayed by what Minter calls "games". Thus is the usual underhanded stuff that js rife in the scrap business. The last place I worked was the oldest pipe plant in the US, melting down what amounted to around 60 shredded cars an hour to make water pipe for New York City, Philadelphia, and others in the Northeast. There was always a love-hate relationship with scrap dealers because of the ridiculous games. I just don't understand why this aspect of the industry persists in a business world that has for the most part walked away from playing "games" of swindling each other, with more important issues such as global competition at the fkrefront. Anyways...great read although it is heavily focused on China with only a bare mention of the scrap business in India and Europe, and casting the US is the most negative light possible.

The scrap yards that I remember from my youth were what the author refers to as auto junkyards. I always believed they were the one and only place where scrap went, whether it was a car being sold in pieces or put into a crusher and turned into a pile of junk metal. I never really knew that there were places that specialized in other types of scrap, but I soon learned about the long history of scrap yards as I read this book. The author takes the reader on a tour of the various types of scrap that exist. From electrical wire, to electric motors, to plastics, to cars and to steel and aluminum and many more, each type of scrap has a market and a place in the recycling pecking order. In addition, there are places in China that specialize in each of these types of scrap. Our garbage is China's, and to a lesser extent, India's raw materials from which new products spring. Each has a growing economy and a developing middle class that wants the same goods that are present in the United States. In addition, we are still addicted to buying inexpensive merchandise from China and the "raw" materials have to come from somewhere. The easiest way to obtain those goods is to come to the United States and buy them from recyclers and scrap dealers. Although that would seem to be an expensive proposition; buying a container of scrap, shipping it to China and then separating it into useful parts, nothing could be further from the truth. The containers travel back to China virtually free. The shipping companies have to get the ships and containers back to China, and they would get nothing for an empty one way trip, so they offer deep discount shipping to get something to help cover the cost of fuel. And, getting the product ready is also inexpensive as labor in developing countries is also cheap. The author made several points worth pondering. One, if the developing world didn't buy our scrap, it would end up in landfills, filling them more quickly and burying materials that have significant value. In addition, by buying our scrap, these countries are not opening mines to find the raw materials, which saves the environment and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. Imagine how many emissions would come from a copper mine, where 100 tons of material have to be moved to extract one ton of copper ore. Although the methods of stripping wire, or melting plastic in China are hardly ideal, they beat the various alternatives available. The final take away from this book is that it is best to reduce your purchasing habits, then to reuse items as much as possible, and only then to recycle. It certainly opened my eyes. In addition, I found the book to be wonderful read. The author wrote well, and despite some redundancy, the book is full of important information. I cannot recommend it highly enough!

This book is intense. I had no idea. In my continuing education about the global economy and what commodities are considered valuable, this was an essential read. I had been into the recycling craze back in the '70s ( old hippie, giving away my age now...) and given it quite some thought over the years. Most recently I have questioned the wisdom of buying new vehicles every few years even to have one that gets better gas mileage ( why I still have a 23 year old car that gets just as good mileage as many newer models, has no car payments and super low insurance). I have heard the environmental argument about the recycling plants in developing countries - so, duh, if you don't like it, stop consuming so much stuff and then throwing it out. Better to go to China and get reused on some level than to dump it in the landfill. The author got me thinking what else gets landfilled that some inventive and enterprising person is going to invent a way to reuse it. As far as the conditions over there and the pollution, let's quickly get some of the more basic problems handled like proper food and water. After that, the pollution and working conditions will become a priority. I even had some thoughts about going into the junk business myself. What a way to make money. But I suppose you might have to be that person who has pleasurable memories of Sunday mornings strolling through the junk yard with your loved ones. If you are the least interested in a major sector of the global economy or you ever gave one thought about what happens after the County recycling truck picks up your recycling, read this book, it will astound you.

It's a very good, relatively entertaining way to learn about what happens to matter we recycle ranging from plastic bottles to automobiles and metals. The USA ships scrap and recyclables to China and other emerging markets where labor rates are low enough to pay for recycling and recovery of valuable matter, especially metals. The author makes it entertaining by occasionally featuring information about his family's experience running a junkyard in Minnesota. The author provides his personal observations, philosophy and ideas about economics and trade as applied to the junk and recycling industries. It's often sensible and sometimes thought-provoking; however, the ideas merit further research and thought and expertise in fields such as microeconomics, business, developmental studies and so on and at times the author's personal experiences at his family's junkyard become a bit self-indulgent.

While the book was interesting, it certainly was one that could be put down for days (weeks) at a time. I'd heard an interview on NPR, read the sample and decided to forge ahead while reading other books. Since I didn't have to be tested on details, or have to remember exact places and years, I didn't mind the skipping from years forward then back or from country to country. Probably the strongest praise I can give the book is that I finished it, even though it was more detailed than I'd expected.

I thoroughly enjoyed Junkyard Planet. The author's enthusiasm for the subject fills every page. The book was well-researched, well-written, and a pleasure to read. The book examines the global recycling industry, with an emphasis on the U.S. and Asia. I wish it talked a bit more about paper and plastics recycling, but since the author's expertise is in metals, that's the main focus. You won't regret taking the time to read this book -- and you won't soon forget the economic, political, and environmental stories it tells. And in the spirit of the book -- pass it along for "reuse" once you've read it -- don't put it in the recycle bin!

I don't think I saw my first junkyard until well into my 20's. We just didn't have them where I grew up and the industry had a bad reputation as being dodgy. Possibly this was the stereotype conveyed through numerous TV series and movies. Junkyard Planet takes the reader through a deep and meticulously researched story about the modern day scrap merchants. Where the metal comes from, how it gets sorted, where it's sold and what happens to it next. We discover what happens to the discarded Christmas tree lights, abandoned cars, TVs, motors, bed frames, wiring, phones and more. Because the author was at one time the only person in the world reporting on scrap metal in Asia and actually came from a family who owned a junkyard, there are very few people qualified to write such an account. The book mainly covers the US and China and various characters are introduced along the way. Rather than a quick read, the level of detail is such that it took a while longer to get through. Because I read this as an ebook, the authors' photos were at the end and too difficult to make out. I'd recently read Adam Minter's book about the secondhand market and saw Junkyard Planet was his first. I found both books equally engaging, and interesting.

A must read if you are in the scrap/recycling business. A lot of valuable info.

I just finished reading this book. I'm not a shopper and also don't throw things out (too quickly). I give 'stuff' away when no longer needed rather than throwing it out and I recycle religiously. I thought I knew a few things about where 'stuff' went after it's no longer useful, but I knew nothing. Where does your phone come from? Where does it go when you're done with it? You have no idea. This is an important book

Adam is really putting all strings together and helps to make sense on scenes we can see on the street but haven't consciously perceived until this eye opening report. Easy read, lively reported and presented, relevant subject. A recommendation to anyone being curious about where /how things go when you slept them go. I live in China for over 8 years and always wondered how recycling works and how the "recycling stations" on the street contribute and can provide livelihood to families - now I start understanding it.

Illuminates the murky world of recycling with surprising results.

The author is the grandson of a junkyard owner but chose to be a journalist. He takes us around the U.S. and the Far East and describes good and bad recycling facilities. And describes the history of junk yards in the U.S. It is well written, personal and contains interesting information about the recycling industry. One would expect it to be dry but because he also describes the colourful personalities who ply their trade in the industry he does not get bogged down in what might a fairly esoteric topic.