Overconsumed

In his previous book, Junkyard Planet, journalist Adam Minter went around the world to see what happened to American recyclables such as cardboard, shredded cars, and Christmas lights around the world as they became new things. In Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, Minter looks at what happens to all the things that get resold and reused, objects that end up in Arizona thrift stores, Malaysian flea markets, Tokyo vintage shops, and Ghanaian used-electronics shops. Who’s buying the tons of goods that get downsized, decluttered, or discarded every year? Does the fact that we can just pass something off to a thrift shop justify our buying more things? What about the sheer scale of it all? Minter joins us in the studio to talk about how we filled the world with all this stuff, and what really needs to change for us to get out from under it—no matter where we live.

Go beyond the episode:

• Adam Minter’s Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale
• Want to learn more about the impacts of fast fashion on consumption and waste? Listen to our episode “Fashion Kills” with Dana Thomas
• For our Autumn 2019 issue, Rob G. Green visited Kumasi, Ghana, to write about another problem created by the secondhand market—toxic scrap-tire fires
• Where does the money that Goodwill makes from selling donations actually go?
• Learn more about the staggering scale of Anglo-American consumption in Susan Strasser’s Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash
• Abandon your idols: Mari Kondo has begun selling you junk to replace the junk you just KonMari’d
• Read more about why local textile industries are dying in Ghana and African countries more broadly
• Might recycling pose a similar “moral hazard” to wearing seat belts? Some consumer psychologists suspect that the option to recycle might actually increase resource consumption
• Learn more about the Right to Repair movement

Tune in every (other) week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek and sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

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