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The scandal of rubbish disposal worldwide

Food and fashion are the chief culprits, with too much organic waste going to landfill, and 10-15 per cent of new clothing routinely incinerated as ‘deadstock’

15 July 2023

9:00 AM

15 July 2023

9:00 AM

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, And Why It Matters Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Simon & Schuster, pp.400, 20

Above a foul towering dump in Delhi a cloud of vultures and Siberian black kites fly in hope, ‘careening over the mountainside like some dreadful murmuration’. Here some of the world’s million waste pickers stash water bottles along their route, ‘like climbers making camp’. Oliver Franklin-Wallis concedes that his subject – the dirty truth of what happens to our rubbish – is not appealing.

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