Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Humes (The Forever Witness) returns to the environmental issues he wrote about in previous books, such as Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash. Plastic waste in the air, soil, and water is a global problem that didn’t exist 100 years ago, but now it’s widespread. As a way of approaching the topic, Humes details the history of packaging in the U.S. and what society can learn from a time when people didn’t produce as much waste. He discusses new and old strategies for dealing with multiple types of trash and adds “repair, repower, and rethink” to the traditional three r’s (“reduce, reuse, recycle”). Real-life success stories abound: a father and son recycling project in Seattle, a chef in Pennsylvania devoted to safer and greener kitchens, and a nonprofit that grows front-yard produce gardens in Los Angeles. Humes shows that reducing pollution has health, environmental, and economic benefits and argues that each person can affect change in their household and community, while businesses and coalitions that change policies nationwide can make an even larger impact.