The scandal of rubbish disposal worldwide
Above a foul towering dump in Delhi a cloud of vultures and Siberian black kites fly in hope, ‘careening over the mountainside like some dreadful murmuration’. Here some of the world’s million waste pickers stash water bottles along their route, ‘like climbers making camp’. Oliver Franklin-Wallis concedes that his subject – the dirty truth of what happens to our rubbish – is not appealing. Much of the unusable, stained tat charity shops receive is sent abroad, whether it’s wanted or not But he does his best to make that untrue with arresting analogies and metaphors that shine like metal in trash in his account of his extensive travels through what
