Adam Minter has a gift for talking rubbish.
He's been doing it all over the world. Spreading the word that trash, waste, junk—whatever you want to call it—isn't just a by-product of our consumer-oriented society, but an essential part of its economic future. And he has the stats to prove it.
'The global recycling industry employs more people on this planet than any other industry but agriculture,' he says. 'On average it turns over as much money as is generated within the Norwegian economy. We're not talking about a niche industry that makes some cute sustainable greeting cards made from yesterday's newspapers, we are talking about an industry that turns over roughly US$500 billion per year.'
By some estimates, that figure is likely to reach US$1 trillion by 2020.
The son of a scrapyard owner from Minneapolis, Minter grew up surrounded by junk: it funded his schooling and put food on the family table. His father made money out of the things other people discarded, and it was that first-hand experience of the economic value of rubbish that led Minter on a mission to document the size and scale of the global recycling market. Now a foreign correspondent based in China, his observations are detailed in a newly published book called Junkyard Planet: travels in the billion dollar trash trade.
'On balance it touches almost everything that you buy, not just the products that say “recycled” or “post-consumer waste included”, but everything from your automobile engine to the bumper on the back of your automobile. It's a staggeringly large industry,' Minter says.
'The statistic I like to give people in the United States and Europe is that, by volume, the largest volume export from the US and from the EU to China is none other than scrap—meaning waste paper, plastic, rubber, textiles, and metals of course. It's gigantic.' (...)
'The OECD estimates that more than four trillion kilograms of waste is produced in OECD nations every single year. And that waste becomes the opportunity that can solve the problem of increasing demand and reducing supply.'
Minter agrees, stressing that recycling is now clearly a global economic issue, not simply an environmental one.
'Nobody is going to pick through somebody's trash, which in many cases is what recycling is, without an economic incentive to do so. It's very nice that there are environmental benefits to this industry, I think that's fantastic, but ultimately it's an industry that competes with the primary raw materials industry; which is to say, your old recycled beer can, when it goes into a scrapyard, is directly competing with aluminium mined out of a bauxite mine. I mean, that's ultimately what makes this industry work.'
by Antony Funell, ABC | Read more:
He's been doing it all over the world. Spreading the word that trash, waste, junk—whatever you want to call it—isn't just a by-product of our consumer-oriented society, but an essential part of its economic future. And he has the stats to prove it.
'The global recycling industry employs more people on this planet than any other industry but agriculture,' he says. 'On average it turns over as much money as is generated within the Norwegian economy. We're not talking about a niche industry that makes some cute sustainable greeting cards made from yesterday's newspapers, we are talking about an industry that turns over roughly US$500 billion per year.'By some estimates, that figure is likely to reach US$1 trillion by 2020.
The son of a scrapyard owner from Minneapolis, Minter grew up surrounded by junk: it funded his schooling and put food on the family table. His father made money out of the things other people discarded, and it was that first-hand experience of the economic value of rubbish that led Minter on a mission to document the size and scale of the global recycling market. Now a foreign correspondent based in China, his observations are detailed in a newly published book called Junkyard Planet: travels in the billion dollar trash trade.
'On balance it touches almost everything that you buy, not just the products that say “recycled” or “post-consumer waste included”, but everything from your automobile engine to the bumper on the back of your automobile. It's a staggeringly large industry,' Minter says.
'The statistic I like to give people in the United States and Europe is that, by volume, the largest volume export from the US and from the EU to China is none other than scrap—meaning waste paper, plastic, rubber, textiles, and metals of course. It's gigantic.' (...)
'The OECD estimates that more than four trillion kilograms of waste is produced in OECD nations every single year. And that waste becomes the opportunity that can solve the problem of increasing demand and reducing supply.'
Minter agrees, stressing that recycling is now clearly a global economic issue, not simply an environmental one.
'Nobody is going to pick through somebody's trash, which in many cases is what recycling is, without an economic incentive to do so. It's very nice that there are environmental benefits to this industry, I think that's fantastic, but ultimately it's an industry that competes with the primary raw materials industry; which is to say, your old recycled beer can, when it goes into a scrapyard, is directly competing with aluminium mined out of a bauxite mine. I mean, that's ultimately what makes this industry work.'
by Antony Funell, ABC | Read more:
Image: ohannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
