Total Garbage
A Messy Dive into Trash, Waste, and Our World
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Total Garbage by Rebecca Donnelly dives into the messy truth about trash, garbage, waste, and our world—it's a fact-filled and fascinating illustrated middle grade environmental read!
Trash has been part of human societies since the beginning. It seems like the inevitable end to the process of making and using things—but why?
In this fascinating account of the waste we make, we'll wade into the muck of history and explore present-day STEM innovations to answer these important questions:
What is garbage?
Where does our garbage come from?
Why do we make so much garbage?
Where does our garbage go?
What can we learn from our garbage?
How bad is our garbage problem?
How can we do better?
Rebecca Donnelly tackles the extraordinary, the icky, and the everyday, helping us see how our choices, personal and societal, impact our world and our planet—and encouraging us make a change.
Back matter includes a timeline of the history of waste management, selected bibliography, and index.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In seven chapters, Donnelly talks trash, addressing questions including "Where does our garbage come from?"; "Why do we make so much garbage?"; and "What can we learn from our garbage?" The book—filled with statistics from before 2020—touches on the usual topics, but also on archeology, contemporary art, environmental racism, history, upcycling and downcycling, and corporate efforts to keep consumers buying and using plastic. "If you look hard enough, you'll find money at the root of most of our waste problems," reads one characteristically incisive takeaway. Occasional line drawings from Hendrix, cast in teal, break up the text and lighten the mood with gentle humor. Despite the seriousness of the world's garbage predicament, the text's message remains one of encouragement, offering creative examples of different communities' solutions and urging readers not to give up hope. Ages 8–12.
