Throwaway Nation: The Ugly Truth about American Garbage

Americans are burying ourselves in our own waste. It's befouling our air, land, waters, food, and bodies. The US tosses out enough foodstuff to feed the rest of the world. America is the largest buyer of fashion and cosmetics, the second dirtiest industry in the world. We lead the planet in transportation usage and waste, and we're now polluting outer space. Throwaway Nation takes a look at the pileup of waste in the US, including the problem of plastic, the industry of overmedication, e-waste products, everyday garbage, fast fashion trash, space waste, and other forms of profligacy that serve to make our nation the biggest waster on the planet. Looking at the environmental impact of so much garbage, Dondero explores not just how we got here and where we're headed, but ways in which we might be able to curb the tide. From what you do and don't eat, what and how your products are packaged, the rampant production of clothes, the space and waste in which you work, live, what you breath, eat, drink, the tools you use to work and play, the energy overproduced and ill-used for a pleasant lifestyle, the waste you generate, and how humans are beginning to clutter the cosmos--all and more are profiled in the Throwaway Nation--and what we ought to do to prohibit and mitigate the flow of our garbage and to use it productively.

Author: Jeff Dondero
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 03/15/2019
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781538110324


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 02/01/2019 pg. 8
Publishers Weekly 03/04/2019

About the Author
Jeff Dondero has a diverse background and experience in writing, ranging from web content, B2B, books, hard news, and interviews to feature writing. He began his career as stringer and freelancer for the San Francisco Examiner, worked as a reporter and editor for several suburban newspapers, was the entertainment editor for The Marin Independent Journal, a writer and editor of various magazines, wrote for KTVU-TV in the San Francisco Bay Area, toiled in a trade magazine mill, and created a website dedicated to sustainable construction industries (http: //www.greenbuildingdigest.net/). He was invited as a writer-in-residence at the art colony in Rancho Vista, Arizona in 2014, where he wrote a slim volume of poetry. He continues to expand his national readership with books, social media, various writers' blogs and websites, radio and television appearances. Jeff Dondero is also the author of The Energy Wise Home: Practical Ideas for Saving Energy, Money, and the Planet (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and The Energy Wise Workplace: Practical and Cost-Effective Ideas for a Sustainable and Green Workplace (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).