
Wasteland
The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future
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Narrated by:
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Chris Harper
About this listen
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.
©2023 Oliver Franklin-Wallis (P)2023 Hachette BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“With his investigative chops and contagious curiosity, Oliver Franklin-Wallis has cracked wide a dozen hidden, jaw-dropping worlds. … Yet despite its grim revelations, the book offers hope—for we can’t begin to make things right until we understand the nuanced realities of what is wrong. Wasteland is compelling, smart, fair, often funny, always interesting, and just f*ing important. Truly, it’s the most impressive nonfiction I’ve read in quite some time.”—Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Fuzz
“Sometimes it seems as if our main role as humans is to enjoy shiny things for a little while until they become discarded things. This is a fascinating and comprehensive tour of the second half of that equation–the tossed-out usually gets a thousandth the attention of the not-yet-purchased, but Oliver Franklin-Wallis does his best to redress that balance, in a book that wills you see the world quite differently than you did before.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
“Just as everything we consume comes from somewhere on earth, so too everything we produce must go somewhere on earth—even if we don't want to think about it. This book compels us to. A fascinating, deeply researched, and hugely important exposé of what happens to the stuff we no longer want, and the social and environmental cost of dealing with it. Revelatory, thoughtful, and honest about our complex relationship with waste.”—Gaia Vince, award-winning journalist and author of Transcendence and Nomad Century
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By: Adam Minter
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Jungle of Stone
- The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
- By: William Carlsen
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.
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Lacking on adventure, misleading title
- By Allen on 02-23-17
By: William Carlsen
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How to Listen to Jazz
- By: Ted Gioia
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premier art forms. He tells us what to listen for in a performance and includes a guide to today's leading jazz musicians. From Louis Armstrong's innovative sounds to the jazz-rock fusion of Miles Davis, Gioia covers the music's history and reveals the building blocks of improvisation. A true love letter to jazz by a foremost expert.
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Kind of useless as an audiobook.
- By Mitch Foster on 02-28-20
By: Ted Gioia
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The Family
- By: Ed Sanders
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In August of 1969, during two bloody evenings of paranoid, psychedelic savagery, Charles Manson and his dystopic communal family helped to wreck the dreams of the Love Generation. At least nine people were murdered, among them Sharon Tate, the young, beautiful, pregnant, actress and wife of Roman Polanski.
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The most complete history of the saga
- By Douglas on 07-15-24
By: Ed Sanders
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Waste Wars
- The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
- By: Alexander Clapp
- Narrated by: Greg Lockett
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
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Inspired, illuminated writing about an obscured, devastating tragedy
- By Matthew Bond on 06-17-25
By: Alexander Clapp
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The Cauldron and the Drum
- A Journey into Celtic Shamanism
- By: Rhonda McCrimmon
- Narrated by: Carolynne Henry
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Celtic shamanism (aka European shamanism) is an ancient spiritual tradition whose origin predates the arrival of Christianity in northern Europe. One of the central beliefs of Celtic shamanism is that the spirituality you seek is inside you. In this groundbreaking book, Rhonda McCrimmon explains the origin and practices of Celtic shamanism, and teaches listeners about the three energetic cauldrons and how to work with them.
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Eye-opening in its simplicity
- By Elisabeth on 02-13-25
By: Rhonda McCrimmon
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The Friedkin Connection
- A Memoir
- By: William Friedkin
- Narrated by: William Friedkin
- Length: 19 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Friedkin Connection takes listeners from the streets of Chicago to the suites of Hollywood and from the sixties to today. William Friedkin offers a candid look at a thrilling era of Hollywood cinema, when traditional storytelling gave way to the rebellious and alternative; when filmmakers like him captured the paranoia and fear of a nation undergoing a cultural nervous breakdown.
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The Perfect Old School Director Movie Book
- By Lars E. Soderlund on 05-22-25
By: William Friedkin
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Waste Land
- A World in Permanent Crisis
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going.
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Climate / Population Alarmism in a Mask
- By ElovesK on 02-07-25
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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The Demon in the Machine
- How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
- By: Paul Davies
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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What is life? In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect.
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Thought Provoking
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-24
By: Paul Davies
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Blood and Oil
- Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power
- By: Bradley Hope, Justin Scheck
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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From award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters comes a revelatory look at the inner workings of the world's most powerful royal family, and how the struggle for succession produced Saudi Arabia's charismatic but ruthless Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS.
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Nothing New Here
- By Susie Takach Seligman on 09-10-20
By: Bradley Hope, and others
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On Palestine
- By: Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Operation Protective Edge, Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine.
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Excellent Introduction/101 Level Book
- By Anonymous User on 10-24-23
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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Clarity and Connection
- By: Yung Pueblo
- Narrated by: Yung Pueblo
- Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Clarity and Connection, Yung Pueblo explores how intense emotions accumulate in our subconscious and condition us to act and react the ways we do. With his distinctive voice, at once spare and evocative, the author guides us through the excavation and release of the past that is required for growth.
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Halting speech halts listening
- By Elissa Bean on 09-29-21
By: Yung Pueblo
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Activate Your Vagus Nerve
- Unleash Your Body’s Natural Ability to Overcome Gut Sensitivities, Inflammation, Autoimmunity, Brain Fog, Anxiety and Depression
- By: Dr. Navaz Habib
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Your vagus nerve is the largest and most important nerve in your body. It carries messages to and from your brain, gut, heart, and other major muscles and organs. However, common issues like inflammation, stress, or physical trauma can interfere with the nerve's ability to function. Luckily, there are tons of quick-and-easy ways to activate and exercise the nerve, strengthening its function and restoring your body to good health.
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Elton John? & Great book
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-19
By: Dr. Navaz Habib
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Secrets of the Octopus
- By: Sy Montgomery, Warren K. Carlyle IV - contributor, Alex Schnell - foreword
- Narrated by: Sy Montgomery
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Remarkable new discoveries affirm the octopus as one of nature’s most intelligent and complex animals. This new book brings us closer than ever to these elusive creatures. The companion to the highly anticipated National Geographic television special, this book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus—a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.
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Loved the narrative format
- By Kiana on 03-11-25
By: Sy Montgomery, and others
Well written and narrated
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Our Trash
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Will change how you think about waste
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I also appreciated the author’s self-disclosing style and avoidance of preaching unrealistic ideals or oversimplifying a very complex problem. The best books cause you to think, question and explore topics further. This does all of that.
Great breadth of coverage
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Waste Knot
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Shocking book
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I wish everyone could read this book or at least be made aware of what happens to each type of waste we are creating.
Remember, 1st reduce, then reuse, repair, reuse, repair, resell, reuse :-) and only then when there is no other choice… recycle and recycle properly!
Clear and interesting review of all our waste
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Impactful
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Big dose of reality - highly recommend!
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