Wasteland The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY THE NEW YORKER, THE GUARDIAN, and KIRKUS REVIEWS

An award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep dive into the global waste crisis, exposing the hidden world that enables our modern economy—and finds out the dirty truth behind a simple question: what really happens to what we throw away?

In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a shocking journey inside the waste industry—the secretive multi-billion dollar world that underpins the modern economy, quietly profiting from what we leave behind. In India, he meets the waste-pickers on the front line of the plastic crisis. In the UK, he journeys down sewers to confront our oldest—and newest—waste crisis, and comes face-to-face with nuclear waste. In Ghana, he follows the after-life of our technology and explores the global export network that results in goodwill donations clogging African landfills. From an incinerator to an Oklahoma ghost-town, Franklin-Wallis travels in search of the people and companies that really handle waste—and on the way, meets the innovators and campaigners pushing for a cleaner and less wasteful future.  
 
With this mesmerizing, thought-provoking, and occasionally terrifying investigation, Oliver Franklin-Wallis tells a new story of humanity based on what we leave behind, and along the way, he shares a blueprint for building a healthier, more sustainable world—before we’re all buried in trash.

Oliver Franklin-Wallis is an award-winning magazine journalist and currently the features editor of British GQ. His writing has appeared in GQ, WIRED, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist, The Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, Men’s Health, and many other publications. In 2017, he was named “Print Writer of the Year” by the British Society of Magazine Editors. He has spoken at events such as WIRED Live, Web Summit, and London Tech Week. He has appeared on TV, radio and podcasts, including the WIRED podcast, BBC Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, and BBC World Service. He lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and daughter.