Trashed, by Derf Backderf

This cover of this book immediately caught my eye in the bookstore.  It just seemed like it would be an entertaining read, and it definitely was.  But this book is more than just entertaining.  This book draws on the authors prior experience as a garbage man in the years 1979 - 1980, and attempts to raise awareness of the huge problem that garbage has become in our world.  That's not something you would normally expect of a graphic novel.

First, let's talk about the story itself.  J.B, the central character, starts the story being harassed by his mother to take the garbage out.  He ends up making a mess out at the curb and decides that the garbage man can take care of it.  Little does he know that this will come full circle - he ends up becoming one of the two new garbage men in his town, and needs to deal with messes more disgusting than the one that he left for the previous garbage man.  He quickly quickly comes to realize that it is a thankless job, and that there are major problems with our waste management strategies.

The escapades of J.B. and his cohorts are very entertaining, funny, and sometimes they are downright nasty (after reading this, you won't want to piss off your garbage collector).  The story line in general is fairly familiar, and somewhat parallels the movie Backdraft (a rookie firefighter has a rough time after starting out, gains experience in a very traumatic way, and ultimately becomes a seasoned firefighter, and ends up right where he started, ready to show the ropes to the next rookie).

Second, there is the factual part of the story, which is provided in sections throughout the book.  This is the most sobering part of the story, and I found some of it very disturbing.  One of the first disturbing facts is that not much has changed in waste management since 1980.  This book was published in 2015, so let's call it 2013 to allow time for writing - that is still 30+ years with very little advancement.

When I was a young child, we used to take yard waste to the dump in my town, which had its own incinerator, and for years everything was burned.  I don't remember when, but at some point that changed.  The incinerator was shut down and was simply used as a collection place, and all of our waste was trucked to another town and that was pretty much all I knew about it - I assumed it was being burned in an incinerator in another town.

After I graduated from college and moved out of my parents house, I learned that our garbage went into a landfill.  It is interesting that I learned this once my town started curbside recycling.  This was the year they first came out with those small blue bins, and there were many restrictions on what could be recycled (I remember bottled drinks like the coffee drink Capio being a particular pain, since the bottle caps left a metal ring around the bottle which you needed to clip off before it could be recycled).  Anyway, MASSPIRG (Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group) came around with a petition for people to sign, because they found out that recyclables which were now being picked up separately from garbage were actually still going into a landfill instead of being recycled.  That was the first I had heard of a landfill, and I was in my early 20's.

This book revealed details that I never would have guessed.  I know that over the least 20 years we

have increasingly become more of a "throw away" society - you see it everywhere (if you can name it, there's probably a disposable version of it).  But, apparently we started this process way back in 1960 - over 50 years ago!  It hadn't taken full hold yet when I was a child.  I remember getting milk delivered in glass bottles, which then got exchanged for full bottles at the next delivery - they may not have been recycled, but they were definitely reused.   We also used to get Charles Chips potato chips (see picture) in a big metal tin, which I imagine must have been recycled back then (or at least reused).

But, just take a look at how things are today:

• Plastic bags are used by most stores (particularly grocery stores, but CVS, book stores, department stores, etc. all primarily use plastic).  If not recycled, they end up in a landfill, and lets face it, remembering to recycle them is a pain.
• Soda/seltzer/juice bottles are all plastic - you need to take them back to be recycled, or recycle them at your curb, or they end up as garbage.  Many of these do get recycled, but at various events involving many people in a public place, they most likely just get thrown out.  It is getting better, but not where it should be.  Note that hundreds of millions of these bottles get used, and they have been around a long time.
• Plastic utensils, plates, cups - all of which are recyclable.  But, when you attend a party, how much of this do you see get actually get washed and recycled rather than being thrown out?
• Everything is made disposable these days - plastic razors, condiment packets and bottles (ketchup, mustard, relish, BBQ sauces), toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, etc.
• Food scraps - we should be keeping these for compost, but much of it ends up in the garbage or down the sink disposal system.

Things are improving, but slowly.  These days, we have large bins (30 - 50 gallon size) that we leave at the bottom of our driveways for both trash and recycling, which get picked up by a semi-automated truck.  We recycle more and more every year, but it barely makes a dent in the amount of garbage we are producing.  As of a 2013 study, we are only recycling 29% of our 389 million tons of garbage produced every year.  Check out the pie chart to the left to see the distribution of our garbage.  An alarming amount of it - almost 30% - is just packaging that most of our stuff comes in.  Some of that can be recycled, but packing materials like Styrofoam, or those plastic bubbles that are filled with air, cannot be recycled.  The percentage of materials that cannot be recycled is also alarmingly high - over 20% consists of things that cannot be recycled, like diapers.  But, another 20% called "durable goods" contains items that can be recycled to some degree - but not if they are left out at the curbside to be collected by the garbage man.

Some other interesting facts (I won't reveal them all):

• Wealthier people produce more garbage (this is somewhat counter-intuitive, but is apparently true).
• The average person produces 5.06 pounds of garbage every day, which amounts to 1,874 pounds every year.
• Roadkill is included in garbage pickup in many areas - 129 million dead critters every year.  I had no idea this was handled by garbage crews.
• Garbage collection is the 6th most dangerous job (the top 5 include loggers, fisherman, pilots, roofers, and iron workers, in some order).  It is interesting that policeman and fireman don't make the top 6!
• Yellow torpedoes. I won't reveal what this one is - either read this book or research it on your own, but it is a major problem in many states.
• Landfills can be up to 400 feet deep, and one of the largest covers over 2,000 acres of land.
• Many landfills don't have sufficient regulation and safety precautions, and all of them (even the most recent ones) are leaking toxic chemicals into the environment that could poison a water supply.

Ultimately, the only way to put a major dent into the amount of garbage produced is to stop producing so much, meaning buying and using less stuff, and recycling what we do use.  It seems clear that there is a long road ahead of us.  Can we make things better?

This book is an alarming testament to our legacy of destruction on this planet, and reveals things that most of us have no clue about in our daily lives - we take it for granted that things are properly handled.  This is an entertaining story that opens your eyes to the harsh realities of the world we live in.  I think this is a story that everyone should read.