Total Garbage
Total Garbage: A Messy Dive Into Trash, Waste, and Our World by Rebecca Donnelly is a nonfiction look at the historical and present situation regarding trash. While we may throw it away, Donnelly’s exploration shows that there is no such place away.
The book is structured with several chapters that opens with an introduction and details “What is Garbage” all the way to “How Can We Do Better?” There is also an Author’s Note and a list of a few resources at the end of the book. Readers will quickly be enamored with the history of trash - somewhat fascinating- and the current statistics. However, a few things I wish Donnelly had done differently is that she had included footnotes or more references to particular information she presents in the book. I think it is important for young readers to be critical thinkers, and, unfortunately, this book misses the mark in doing more than a list of resources at the end. By not providing the evidence for her claims throughout, I think she does a disservice to her work and concerningly presents a text that some readers may take as the whole truth.
There is little in the way of talking about trash without coming across the topic of environmentalism and climate change/ global warming. Donnelly definitely weaves in and connects to these topics in her book. She does, however, temperate it with the realization that attempting to live a life of “zero waste” is practically impossible but encourages readers to consider what they can do to be more aware of their consumer mentality and the waste we produce because of it.
Noteworthy mentions/quotes:
In the Introduction, Donnelly does a good job of laying out the purpose of the book and what the readers will learn: “What is garbage, where does it come from, where does it go, why do we make so much of it, and how can we do better? We’re also going to ask just how bad the trash problem is for ourselves and our planet, and if our garbage has anything to teach us” (3).
“But how far away is away if the doll was lying in a trash pile, waiting to be rediscovered by an archaeologist more than two thousand years in the future?” (18).
On page 31, Donnelly discusses briefly the process of creating plastic from fossil fuels. She discusses that it took over a million years to create that fuel. “Millions of years is a lot of time to spend for a plastic bag that gets thrown away after a single use!” For families that teach a young earth, this will be a point worth noting with your reader.
Donnelly doesn’t just focus on trash in her book. She weaves in other contemporary movements such as economic inequality, environmental justice, and social justice into her story about trash. She does rightfully highlight that refineries and other waste dealing industries are often in lower income areas. However, I think caution needs to be used to then support a claim that the lives in the lower income areas are not considered as valuable since they have to deal with the health effects from the byproducts of those industries. Real estate can be a tricky business and coloring it as injustice or racism is a disservice to an issue that has more nuance and complexity.
“Economic inequality can also create waste. We often see “buy in bulk” or “buy the biggest package you can afford” as a suggestion for making less trash” (49).
On page 50, Donnelly mentions the lead issue in water for residents of Flint, Michigan. She writes, “More than half of Flint’s residents are Black and nearly 40 percent live under the federal poverty line. There’s a term for this issue: environmental racism.”
On page 65, Donnelly mentions that a lot of the U.S. recycling ends up in China and that much of the single bin recycling actually ruins items that can be recycled - such as a water on paper.
“The United States makes the most plastic waste of any country on Earth, and we export a lot of that to countries that aren’t equipped to handle it properly” (66). No sources or other statistical information is provided to support this statement. Some statistics are given earlier on the same page, but it does not specifically reference the U.S. in comparison to the numbers from other countries.
On page 72-73, Donnelly mentions the items often disposed of in the sewers that collect and create what is known as “fatbergs.”
Donnelly highlights some artists who utilize trash to create art.
On page 81, she highlights “John Outterbridge, a Black artist in Los Angeles” who uses trash to “create an artistic statement about what it means to be a marginalized person in America.”
Donnelly also weaves in new wording for homelessness - such as “unhoused.”
“Studying trash with the tools of an archaeologist can also lead to a better understanding of social justice issues like homelessness, also known as homelessness. In surveys of things left behind at abandoned encampments, researchers learned that many of the things that well-meaning people gave to the unhoused weren’t always useful to them” (84).
Chapter 6, “How Bad is Our Garbage Problem?” opens with a statement “In this chapter, we’ll see that our garbage isn’t just our problem. It’s a problem for the environment, human health, and social justice” (95).
In this chapter, she later claims that if nothing is done about the plastic problem, then “by 2050 the weight of all the plastic in the ocean could be larger than the weight of all the fish” (105). Again, no resources or statistical data is presented to support this claim.
Later in the chapter, there is a section titled "Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice”. She later states on page 113, “For most of the twentieth century in Houston, Texas, 80 percent of landfills were located in Black neighborhoods. It’s hard to deny that environmental racism was at work in this situation, because Black residents were only 25 percent of the population.” Again, no resources or other possible reasons for this are explored.
Overall, I found the book interesting and concerning for young readers who may not have enough critical reading skills to process what may be suspect and propaganda in this book. Nevertheless, for families and students studying argumentation, I think this could be a great piece for reading and examining the author’s argument - what did she do well, what is lacking, etc. If you are not planning to use this as a piece to critically examine as part of an academic unit or study, then I would exercise caution in just handing it to an upper elementary reader who will not fully understand complexity in the issues presented.
