I wish I anticipate, many of our Wellington Live community, have  been generally  aware that plastics and other waste is fast becoming a major problem but this book really does focus our minds on the facts and problems of our consumer society.

The award-winning investigative journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes the reader on an eye-opening journey and shows what happens when you leave your rubbish bin out for collection.

For many people it’s “out of sight, out of mind I’ve done my bit, rinsed out my yoghurt pots and wrapped up broken glass”; but in this reviewer’s opinion all need to be aware of and discussing this urgent global issue of waste.

The author puts on his gum boots and dives into the hidden world of waste exposing: over running sewers in Britain; leaching mountainous landfills in India; poisonous big rivers; ruined mining towns in the USA; ginormous amounts of second-hand donated goods to Africa; oceans choked with plastics. The list goes on and on.

The writer certainly makes the case for the issue of waste actually being a crisis we ignore at our peril. At our peril because waste is just not that simple.

We have all kinds of dangerous waste. Medical industrial, electronic, clothing, plastic, mining, nuclear and now space junk littering our heavens. Again, the list goes on and on.

The plastics revolution combined with planned obsolescence marketing drove our consumer society into a frenzied need to upgrade from our current cars, white goods, etc and a throw away society emerged. Don’t repair, mend or fix; just throw it away and replace. Overproduction led to overconsumption and huge financial gains for manufacturers.

It’s a shocking but engaging read highlighted by occasional touches of wit . Despairing that our modern way of life is so wasteful and our modern economy is built on trash. The author has a remedy, it’s laughably simple: “buy less stuff”. Thankfully many people are trying to instigate this philosophy into their daily lives.

Points to ponder:

1. New Zealand was not mentioned in the book but we need to note that much of our plastic waste, many thousands of tons is sent to South East Asia to deal with.

As global citizens is this Okay for a responsible New Zealand?

2. Waste management is a very profitable corporate business controlled by a handful of large multinational corporations. Is the waste business another example of Profit before responsible management of our resources and environment? Or is this a “woke” opinion ignoring the reality of modern life?

3. Numerous health warnings about the danger of minuscule plastic fragments in our atmosphere, and in all aspects of what we consume being found in our blood stream, in unborn babies and in the food we consume, are seemingly not being given sufficient attention by our authorities.  Is enough being done to manage these risks? Almost certainly not.