Gone Tomorrow

Author: Heather Rogers
Published: 2005

Subtitled, 'The Hidden Life of Garbage', covers much of the same ground as 'Garbage Land', though with more emphasis on the manipulation by companies to promote disposable items over refillable and bulk purchases. I'm often sceptical of claims of corporate manipulation, mostly based on the fact that we have free will as human beings and if we choose to be lazy and wasteful then bad on us.

For example, this book does document some things like disposable drink containers for which companies make large profits in the U.S. while in other countries in Latin America and Europe, the culture returned to or never gave up refillable containers. Bad on us U.S. citizens for letting it happen. Fixing the problem, on the other hand, could be a challenge since we've ceded so much power to those companies.

On the third hand, there is the whole Keep America Beautiful (KAB) anti-littering cabal, pushing for some 50 (!) years the idea that waste is the problem of consumers, not the companies that create the products. On the fourth hand, aren't we? I mean, if we didn't buy those cute Dora the Explorer bath sets with the toxic-to-the-environment PVC head/body molded around the shampoo bottle, then companies would stop making that crap. On the other hand...

Maybe I should stop now. I'm getting dizzy.