Overview

Rubbish is arguably Britain's most pressing environmental concern. Challenging and controversial, this is a rigorous examination of the problems of waste in the UK and the efficacy of the public and private initiatives designed to forestall a crisis fast ballooning into catastrophe We can no longer cope with our waste. Every hour in the UK we throw away enough rubbish to fill the Albert hall - a statistic quoted so often that perhaps we've stopped imagining what it means. And every year the flow accelerates. This is the story of our rubbish - from the first human bowel movement to the littering of outer space. With a hankerchief to his nose, Girling picks through our fridge mountain, our crumbling sewers, trading waste, packaging waste, hazardous industrial waste... it is a mucky saga of carelessness, greed and opportunism, wasted opportunity and official bungling. But Rubbish! is also a plea for us to consider other kinds of waste- the trashing of our landscape, the unstoppable floods of junk that clog our mailboxes, litter the skies and foul the airwaves... Rubbish! may not be a conventional battle cry but this is unmistakably a call to arms - not just for the three 'R's - reduce, re-use, recycle - but for us to fight for new ideas, brave initiative rather than reliance on old systems that are crumbling before our eyes.

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9781909513143

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Reviews

This deeply researched, heartfelt book will make you by turns depressed, angry and inspired to act. * The Sunday Times * Be scared. Be very scared. But be sure to read this book. * Ben Elton * A timely intervention for a human race hooked on throwing things away...Girling's sardonic humour makes unpalatable facts compelling prose. * Countryside Voice * I believe this is one of the most important books of the year...highly fascinating, totally absorbing, compulsively readable. -- Sarah Broadhurst * The Bookseller * With a subject that ranges from the noxious to the infernal, it is a wonder that Girling's book manages to be compulsively readable and often hilarious, as well as important. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *

Author Information

Richard Girling is a senior feature writer for the Sunday Times Magazine. He has been awarded the title Journalist of the Year for two years in a row at the Press Gazette Environmental Press Awards 2008 and 2009. He has also been named Specialist Writer of the Year at the UK Press Awards in 2002 and was also shortlisted for this award in 2005 and 2006. He has been a consultant to the former Department of the Environment and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and author of campaigns for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). He is currently a trustee of the Tree Council.

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