Factually! with Adam Conover - Where Does Our Second-Hand Stuff Actually Go?! with Adam Minter

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Author of Secondhand and Junkyard Planet, Adam Minter, joins Adam to talk about the hidden world of globalized recycling, where our trash actually goes, and the trash, recycling and secondhand economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

Plus, they throw in a handy guide filled with info about each snack and about Japanese culture. And let me tell you something, you are going to need that guide because this box comes with a lot of snacks. I just got this one today, direct from Bokksu, and look at all of these things. We got some sort of seaweed snack here. We've got a buttercream cookie. We've got a dolce. I don't, I'm going to have to read the guide to figure out what this one is. It looks like some sort of sponge cake. Oh my gosh. This one is, I think it's some kind of maybe fried banana chip. Let's try it out and see. Is that what it is? Nope, it's not banana. Maybe it's a cassava potato chip. I should have read the guide. Ah, here they are. Iburigako smoky chips. Potato

chips made with rice flour, providing a lighter texture and satisfying crunch. Oh my gosh, this is so much fun. You got to get one of these for themselves and get this for the month of March. Bokksu has a limited edition cherry blossom box and 12 month subscribers get a free kimono style robe and get this while you're wearing your new duds, learning fascinating things about your tasty snacks. You can also rest assured that you have helped to support small family run businesses in Japan because Bokksu works with 200 plus small makers to get their snacks delivered straight to your door.

So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way I don't know what to think I don't know what to say Yeah, but that's all right Yeah, but okay I don't know anything Hello, welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover

And look, despite how fucked up the world we live in is, and don't get me wrong, it is fucked up, modern life still has its miracles. You know, we've got brain surgery, air travel, video conferencing, and more amazingly, the ability to ignore a request to video conference. Love that modern science. But there is another pillar of modern life, equally miraculous, that we take completely for granted. I'm talking about trash. Think about it. There's this can in my house. I can throw whatever I don't want inside of it. And every week I just wheel it out in front of my building and poof, it disappears. It's gone. Just gone. I never have to think about it again. I don't know where it goes. It's just out of my life. This is a pretty crucial innovation in modern society, especially for an economy like ours, which is based around consumption, around buying as much stuff as

possible. America only has around 4% of the world's population, but we produced 30% of the planet's total waste. If we couldn't disappear that trash, the refuse of all of the wonderful things we're buying, why, we'd be overwhelmed by it. And then maybe we wouldn't want to buy more stuff. And because that waste just sort of disappears, we hardly ever think about where it goes. I know, I know. You know about landfills. You've got a picture of them in your head, but you don't really know where they are. And you've heard about the plastic patch covering the area the size of

Texas somewhere in the South Pacific. But come on, admit it. The main thing we know about our trash is that it disappears. But of course, it doesn't really disappear. Trash is actually an industry worth almost half a trillion dollars. And the details of that industry, the story of where your trash actually goes, has way more fascinating twists and turns than you can possibly expect. Take your Christmas tree lights, for instance. If you have a couple bulbs that don't work, you're probably going to junk the tangled mess. To you at this point, these lights are worthless, right? But they're not. In fact, as our guest today reported a couple years ago, there's actually a thriving economy for recycling Christmas lights,

and its global capital isn't Santa's Village on the North Pole. No, it's a Chinese town called Shizhao, where over 20 million pounds of Christmas lights are reprocessed every single year. In Shizhao, busted Christmas lights dumped in American recycling bins or dropped at the Salvation Army are crunched into bales the size of a love seat that weigh over a ton. Workers toss untangled lights into shredders

that cut them up into millimeter-sized pieces. The pieces mix with water to form a muddy but still Christmassy muck that gets spread along an angled vibrating table with water flowing across it. The copper from the wiring and the brass from the light bulb sockets floats one way, and the plastics and glass from the insulation and light bulbs floats another. And in this way, junky Christmas lights are turned into four readily sellable commodities in the world's industrial powerhouse. Now, that's an

incredible story, but what's true for busted Christmas tree lights is also true for so much of our waste. Whether it's an old cell phone or a dumb t-shirt you got on vacation, our waste is worth something, and our objects live longer, more exciting lives than we typically understand because of this massive industry that is invisible to so many of us. The truth is, our waste doesn't really disappear. It just migrates out of our field of vision. What we call trash is really just a matter of perspective. Well, here today to talk about trash and the truth about the global secondhand industry, our guest today is Adam Minter. He's a journalist for Bloomberg Opinion and most recently the author of Secondhand Travels

in the New Global Garage Sale. He has devoted his life to studying this topic, and I think you're going to love this interview. Please welcome Adam Minter. Adam, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. So you've devoted your life to studying trash. Trash, recycling, secondhand, you bet. You grew up in a junkyard. Is that the case? Yeah. Yeah. My, uh, it goes back several generations. My great grandfather, when he came to the United States, um, he wanted to actually go into vaudeville, believe it or not. He came from Southern Russia. Um, somehow he got on a boat to Galveston, Texas. So not much

vaudeville going on there. So he did what you do when you can't do anything else. And that is, he started picking up, you know, trash from the street and selling it bits of clothing and and scrap metal. And that he eventually made his way up to Minneapolis and that became the family business. And and some of my earliest memories and well into my 20s are being in the family junk warehouse. Well, the reason I came to learn about your work was I read an interview with you somewhere and I can't remember where it was, unfortunately. Apologies to that journalist who was talking to you. But it really stuck with me. You wrote that or you said that Americans are far more moral about what we throw away than what we buy. And when we buy stuff, we sort of do it willy-nilly. Maybe we try to buy the, you know, ethically made thing every once in a while, but most of the time we just buy crap. But then when we throw it away, we suddenly feel extremely moral about it. We say, oh, well, this can't just go to the landfill. We got to find some use for this.

I got to give it to the goodwill. I got to give it to my kids. I got to, you know, make it into a planter pot or something. Like we've got this like pang when we throw things away. And that really stuck with me as man, this whole part of American life or frankly, probably life for people around the world. I'm sure Americans are not unique in this respect that we don't think about that often. Yeah, well, that's right. And it took me a long time to get my head around why people get so emotional, you know, about their recycling and why they get so

emotional about their used clothes. And I think it goes to something really deep in our culture and sort of consumer cultures. And that is we invest so much of our identities within our stuff. You know, that stuff, if you go to the department store, it's not yours yet. You buy it. But when it comes time to throw it away, especially, you know, what we call durable goods, your computer, your clothing, your furniture, you've got memories invested in those things. It's a part of who you are, you know, and that's what we do in contemporary America in particular. We assemble these identities around the stuff that we buy. You know, I may have this designer shirt on my, you know, on my chest or it may be, you know, I may have this designer shirt on my, you know, on my chest, or, or it

may be, you know, I use a certain kind of phone, which is supposed to project, you know, some image of affluence or who I am. And so we invest so much in these things emotionally. And when we let go of them into the recycling bin, into the trash, I think we grow very emotional about what happens to them afterwards, because in a sense, we're sort of jettisoning some of our identity along with it. And we want to maintain some control of that. And, you know, in my travels and in my reporting, I've sort of verified this for myself, seeing it happen over and over where where these emotions get mixed in with sort of the discarding process. Yeah. When I read this, I was so tell you a little bit about what was going on in my life at the time my grandparents on my mom's side had recently passed away and they were real

pack rats they left a house that was just full of they lived in this house for 50 years and it was just full of the stuff of their life and my mom and her siblings were left with sorting through all of it and my mom was traveling to, you know, the town where she grew up a couple times a year to like go through this house full of stuff. And she's calling me saying, hey, Adam, do you want these old Atari computers? Like, we got to get rid of these old Atari computers.

And you and grandpa used to use the Atari computers. And I was like, well, mom, send me a keepsake or two. But, you know, but no, I want the stuff that maybe has collector's value for me because I like old hardware. But like, I don't need boxes and boxes, this stuff. And she's like selling things individually on eBay, like putting them up. And at one point she was like, you know, we could just call the estate company and have them come take it all away and cut us a check for, you know, however much they think it's worth. And then they sell it all.

And I was like, mom, why don't you, why don't you do that? Like that would be such a, so much less work for you and a load off your mind. And she said, cause it seemed to be stressing her out and she's, but she said, no, no, I'm, I'm, I'm happy about that. I like going through these things, but it was hard to sort of parse, right? Yeah. What about that was, where those emotions were coming from and what was the most productive use of them? And a lot of it seemed to be based in that desire of, well, I can't let this stuff go

to waste. Yeah. Like if the estate company comes and takes it away, well, then they might throw it in a landfill. But if I sell these things on eBay, well, at least then they're going to someone who wants the thing, right? But to do that with the volume is so huge. Yeah, there's an even deeper element to that. And I'm so glad you brought that up in your grandparents because, you know, my last book, Secondhand, was really inspired by something similar, which was the passing of my mother. And it was left to my sister and I to clean out her

very modest home. She didn't have a lot of stuff, but it's still stuff. And it's still mom's stuff. And so you have that initial cull where, you know, there's some jewelry there. My sister wanted the jewelry. I wanted some of the jewelry, you know, for my wife. And maybe there were some books. But then you're left with the furniture. And then you're left with the dishes.

And, you know, and what we ended up doing, because we needed to get her out of her home, we ended up putting it in someone's garage, you know, and then over the next year or two, as both of us came into town, slowly we'd go through it, take what we wanted, drop off the stuff at the Goodwill. moment for me. We got down to the very end and there was my mom's China. And my mom loved her China. It was a set of Lennox China. And my sister lives in a small New York apartment. She already has wedding China. You know, at the time I was living in Shanghai in a one bedroom with my wife. I wasn't going to bring China back to China. You know what I mean? It just wasn't going to happen. They have plenty. They have plenty. And so there was this moment of standoff with my sister. And I remember very clearly in the garage saying, well, you know, this meant a lot to mom. She'd want you to have it. And my sister coming back saying, no, she'd want you to have it. No, she'd want you to have it. No, she'd want you to have it. And at the end of it, it's like,

all right, the hell with it. We're going to Goodwill. And we drove it over to Goodwill together. And it was a very emotional experience because my mom loved serving meals on that china. And so when you're letting go of that china, you know, you're letting go of that memory of your mother, you're letting go of that part of yourself. And in a sense, you're taking this thing that has so much invested in it and anonymizing it. That's what I've thought about it. You know, when you drop something at the Goodwill, all of a sudden it no longer has that stuff. It disappears into the system. And I think that sort of gets us close to what's going on when it becomes so hard to let go of these things. I mean, we have so much emotionally invested in them. Yeah. But I think about that. That's a real

asymmetry in that it becomes anonymized to other people. Like I think about the things I'm collecting in my life. I have most of my childhood video games right i'm a video game player and and i have them and and i now have them in my adult home and they're sort of in a cherished spot like i i make sure that they're kept up well because these are like totems from my childhood and then also they're like a somewhat valuable collection they're a fun thing to collect so i occasionally buy new ones old i buy vintage video game cartridges that had a certain emotional resonance for me. And I added to the collection and I think,

well, hold on a second. What am I building here? Because unlike a, say a library where, you know, that has valued anybody or, or some sort of objectively valuable collection.

Well, once I die, no one cares about this. This is just a collection of stuff. Nobody gives, maybe my, you know, a good friend or my girlfriend or my parents might care if I were to drop dead. Oh, these, Adam loved these things so much.

But like, you know, if everybody dropped dead and people just came to this house, they'd be like, we don't know. There's some video games on the shelf. Who gives a shit? And that's so strange. Our stuff becomes just like nothing as soon as we stop thinking about it exactly and that was one of it's been one of the great lessons lessons to me of my work over the last five years is that

most of the stuff that you own most of the stuff in your home is pretty much worthless to anyone but you and you find that out you know spending time in Goodwills or, and even the stuff that you say, oh, well, this is collectible. You know, I can go on eBay right now and I can sell, you know, this cartridge for, you know, 80 bucks, you know, and I only spent 10 bucks on it or five bucks on it at a garage sale. But, you know, it was funny when I was, when I was spending some time at antique stores recently, especially with this latest book, you know, I had this really interesting experience. This wonderful man by the name of Dick Richter in Stillwater, Minnesota, he was walking me through his big antique mall and we came upon the Hummel figurines. You know

what Hummels are? They're these German porcelains. And, you know, about 15, 20 years ago, these things would sell for three, four hundred bucks each. And Dick's walking me through the store. He said, I used to make so much money off these. We'd have them at the front of the store. Now, he says, I can't sell them two thirds off because the people who love this kind of stuff all died off. You know, you had a period where they had a lot of money than they don't. And he said, so now we're doing this. And he walked me through the store and he took me to where a guy was selling, you know, what he was calling vintage Star Wars stuff, you know, you know, vintage Battlestar Galactica stuff, which, you know, to my grandmother, who is a collector of art glass, you know, from the 1920s. If you told her a plastic figurine was vintage, you know, she'd probably slap you, you know.

But that's become the collectible. And, you know, once we're, I'm sorry to say it, once we're dead and gone, those plastic figurines, if they haven't melted, you know, aren't going to be worth much either. They're going to have trouble getting rid of them at two thirds off. Yeah, it's like collectibles are just a collective delusion among it's the same thing. My stuff is valuable to me. Well, collectibles are valuable to the group of collectors. But once all those people are dead it won't matter i'm also reminded of like i i have a small you know vinyl record collection uh because i am uh a man in his 30s and i uh uh you know and

i i uh i listen to all kinds of music i listen to opera sometimes and i bought like what i i was at like a you know record store and i oh here's an opera i know let me in an old box set right and i bought it it was like a nice collection of like a really good Wagner opera. Wow. Cool. And then I bought, I brought it to a Amoeba records. Cause I was,

I don't need this anymore. I'll sell it. You know, you can resell these things. And they were going through all the records I was buying. And they're like, we're not buying this. And I was like,

why not? This isn't great condition. This is a great set. And he's like, nobody buys opera on vinyl. And they made so much of this stuff in like the 60s and 70s. It was sort of the Encyclopedia Britannica of records. If you were like a classical music fan, you'd like buy the really nice edition of DeValkyrie or whatever.

And now nobody wants it. Right. It's like and it's like the weird detritus of the vinyl records industry because no one gives a shit about it. There's all these collections that people probably spent like five thousand dollars on classical music fans back in the 60s. And now it's like completely valueless, even though they all play well and some of the greatest music ever written. But let's get to the secondhand goods piece of it, because I think that's something that

everyone is really interested in, because, look, I've got a box of stuff in my garage right now i'm taking that to goodwill as soon as you know goodwill's open again right um and it's some good stuff i got some some old uh electronics equipment i got some great books i got some clothes and i'm imagining that okay by doing that all that stuff's gonna have a second life um it's all gonna go on the on the shelves on the racks people are People are going to buy it. They're going to bring it home and nothing's going to be wasted. That's the fantasy that I indulge in of going to Goodwill. How true is that fantasy? Well, let me answer that in two ways. I mean,

the first way to answer that is Goodwill wants you to bring in stuff that they can sell. I mean, they have every incentive to do it. You know, and there's a lot of myths about what Goodwill does and doesn't do. One thing they do is they really want everything that comes in to be worth something, because if it's not worth something, they have a trash bill as well. And so they're going to end up paying somebody to pick up the dumpster with your junk in it, you know. And so and you see that if you're at a Goodwill, I spent I've spent so much time in the back rooms at Goodwill and people will literally drop off garbage at a Goodwill, you know? And so, and you see that if you're at a Goodwill, I spent, I've spent so much time in the back rooms at Goodwill and people will literally drop off garbage at a Goodwill, you know? Yeah. Here, you throw this away. Yeah, no, it's what it is. Or the, you know, rat infested

couches. I mean, I've seen it all and you know, and that's just, they don't want to pay to dump it at the landfill. So they, they drop it off at Goodwill. Goodwill generally isn't going to say no to it. Even when I'm putting my bag together, I'm like looking at stuff going like, is this valuable? Let's let Goodwill decide, you know, like I'll, I'll be inclusive with when I'm putting my bag together, I'm like looking at stuff going like, is this valuable? Let's let Goodwill decide. You know, like I'll be inclusive with what I'm putting in the Goodwill box. So certainly. Yeah. So there is that element to it. So they want you to give good stuff and they want to and they try very hard to, you know, to make sure the stuff is good. So the general rule of thumb for Goodwill or really any donation-based charity, Salvation Army,

you know, whatever it is, and thrift shop, is that about one-third of the stuff that goes on the shelves sells, okay? Wow. One-third. Just a third. Just a third. Now, you know, some stores do a better job.

They get better stuff. I mean, if you're a Goodwill in an affluent neighborhood and Goodwill purposely tries to put stores in affluent neighborhoods because affluent people give good stuff, you know, you know, you're going to see that, you know, one third tick upward. You know, if you have Goodwills in lower income neighborhoods, it's going to, in many cases, tick downward because, you know, for instance, clothes are going to be worn longer and harder. And so it's just not what my, you know, I always heard them say it's not merchandise, you know, sort of an old school phrase. So, you know, it's about one third that sells off the shelves, though, on average. That doesn't mean that the other two thirds that's on the shelves

is headed straight to a dumpster, but not by any means. And, and that, the stuff that goes on the shelves, I should back up. I mean, you know, when they do their processing in the back room, they're going to throw the stuff that's garbage in the garbage before it hits the shelves. But, but then what happens to the stuff that doesn't sell off the shelves? I mean, it depends where it is, but if it's most Goodwills, they send it to one of their own discounters called an outlet center where they then start selling it by the pound. And a lot of stuff moves by the pound, clothing by the pound. And those are amazing places to go to. If there's an outlet center near you, they're really worth visiting. The stuff that

doesn't sell at the outlet center, they'll go through it. The stuff that can't be exported, that won't have a market in other places, will end up in the landfill. The other stuff has a range of places. A lot of it's exported to developing countries that have huge demand for secondhand clothing, secondhand electronics. And the clothing that isn't good enough to be sold in these places, a lot of it will be sent to be made into rags. And there's a huge industry globally that makes rags from old clothes. Billions and billions of them used in hotels, restaurants, car washes, wherever it is. So the stuff tends to get used.

If there's a use to be made, the thrift stores will find somebody to sell it to. Wow, I actually had no idea about that. So behind just the stuff on the Goodwill shelf, which is what our initial thought of where all these things are living. There's like this massive industry that's processing and chewing up all the different things that we donate and moving it from place to place based on whatever grade it is. Absolutely. I mean,

you know, there's sort of these hidden industries. If we just talk about North America, for example, clothing. Houston, which we all know, and Mississauga, Ontario, which is a suburb of Toronto, are the great hubs for selling used clothing around the world in the United States. So what happens in a place like Mississauga, where I spent a bunch of time, there's about 20 businesses there, all of which are South Asian-owned, Pakistani, or Indian, and they will buy from Goodwills and thrift stores around North America used clothing that hasn't sold on their shelves. And they will bring it to their warehouses, tens of thousands of tons a month of clothing, sort it for different markets. So they'll say, oh, well, okay, you know,

these summer clothes will do really well in Nigeria, you know, and so they'll pack for Nigeria and they'll know exactly what should be going, you know, and so they'll pack for Nigeria and they'll know exactly what should be going, you know, into places like Nigeria and Ghana and Benin. Or this is going to be a load that's, you know, ideal for, you know, this buyer we have in Klang, Malaysia. Or this is, you know, perfect for somebody in Panapat, India. So there's these enormous hidden networks, hidden if you don't look for them. If you look for them, they're still hard to find. Believe me, it took me a long time and lots of cold calling to get into Mississauga, Ontario. But it's a massive, massive industry that's crucial to clothing people in emerging

market countries, among other tasks it accomplishes. I think most people probably don't even have, it's probably even counterintuitive to folks that these things are being shipped around the world like that's not something that we think of as being loaded into a container and put on a ship and brought you know to africa or to asia is our used clothes we imagine things going the other way but never that our used things are valuable enough to spend fossil fuels to like put them on a container ship. Yeah. And yet they are. And that goes to a lot of things. I mean, it depends on the emerging market, but, you know, there's two things that attract people in emerging markets to use clothing from North America and from Europe. Number one, it's durable. And, you know, you think, well, wait,

it's used clothing. Well, you have to think of it as massively pre-tested. You know, if somebody in Minnesota has worn something for a while, you know, it's probably, you know, and washed it and it's gone through a goodwill and they've looked at it. You know, it's not something that's going to fall apart when it goes through the washer. And so, you know, if you're in Ghana, where I've spent a lot of time, that blouse, that pair of jeans, those shorts are going to be, you know, far more attractive than a very cheaply produced fast fashion item that's just been delivered directly from China. And the second attraction, of course, has always been the cost. You know, it's a low cost garment. The interesting thing is, you know, increasingly it's not so low cost.

garment. The interesting thing is, you know, increasingly it's not so low cost. You know, the low cost fast fashion that's being made in places like Southeast Asia has actually become cheaper in many cases than used clothing. So now used clothing is directly competing against new, you know, in places like Ghana, even though the new clothing is really not very durable, not very good quality. Wow. Yeah. This is really interesting because it's sort of, you know, you hear regarding clothes or electronics. Well, the logic of capitalism, you know, means wants us to turn over our supply of those things very often. Once they this is out of fashion. So buy new stuff. You know, this these electronics are out are obsolete. Throw it away and buy something new. But the logic capitalism at the same time also wants to extract value from anything that

has any value whatsoever so of course a system like this would spring up like yeah what one of the things that first cued me into this was i started seeing around la these bins by a company called us again like use again that they're just like literally scattered around the city um bins where you can drop clothes and i looked at it and i was like, oh, this is not a nonprofit. This is not Goodwill. This is like a company that is just collecting used clothes like on the street. So people could be, you know, pooping in bags and throwing them in those bins. Like it's probably quite a job to like sort through those things. But these clothes must have value if only to turn them into rags or something. Oh, yeah. Well, just in terms of like, you know, emerging market countries. I mean, you know, I keep returning to West Africa because I've spent

a lot of time there. And one of the things that surprised me most when I first went to West Africa and was walking around Ghana, you know, big cities like Accra, which is the capital of Ghana, or you go north a little bit. I spent a bunch of time in a place called Tamale, which is the capital of the northern region there is retail in ghana in nigeria in benin in these countries is second hand you know 90 of what you see on the streets the apparel retailers are retailing second-hand apparel they're not retailing new and so you just their entire clothing economy is our second-hand goods in europe's and australia's and not so much japan's that stuff stays in southeast asia but it's huge in Southeast Asia. And, you know, I think we have this image in North America that this stuff is just dumped on Africa. Oh, these poor Africans, they need it. I mean, theyions on their phones as we are, and they're looking to wear that stuff.

And so, you know, the people who supply this to them in places like Houston and Mississauga, they know what to package for that market in Nigeria. And when it gets to Nigeria or it gets to Benin, I mean, these sorting warehouses where they have it, they then will sort these clothes, you know, oh, this city in Nigeria likes this color, this fashion, this type of garment. I mean, it gets that granular. So, I mean, that's where you see the profit motive. It's really deep. The market is enormous. That's fascinating. Tell me about electronics.

I imagine that there must be a similar process like that. I mean, even now, I think we're all used to when I get a new phone, hey, this company, Gazelle or another company like that will buy my phone. And where does that phone go when we sell it to that company? Well, globally, I mean, this is really interesting. The fastest growing niche of the global smartphone market is secondhand. People are buying phones, secondhand phones in bigger quantities than ever before. And increasingly, like that market for phones is starting to look like the market for cars. Again,

the United States, 90% of the cars that sell every year are used cars, which makes sense, you know, because they're expensive, you know? And we all, we all know they depreciate most quickly at the beginning.

So you get a, you get a three year pre-owned and you get a better deal and it's just as good a car. And that, that's what, that's what the smart consumer reports reading person does. Yeah. And in the age of the $1,000 smartphone,

the same thing is happening. So these phones that you're, you can go and you can trade in a phone at Apple now, just like you can trade in a car at Toyota. And those phones are refurbished. They clean them up and they sell them, probably in North America, you can order them online. Apple has a thriving used phone business on its website. You know, I know for a fact that they work with distributors around the world. So if it's an older model phone, say

it's a 6S, you know, that phone is not going to stay in North America. People in North America don't want the 6S, but, you know, maybe somebody in Southeast Asia does. And so you have these incredible networks of electronics distribution chains. Hong Kong is one of the great hubs for it because Chinese are the world's largest consumers of smartphones. They also sell them at a higher rate. And so much of that stuff flows into Hong Kong. one auction house there that's dealing in millions of dollars of phones that are auctioned off to various secondhand sellers around Southeast Asia every day. You know, and it's interesting, again, the markets get very granular. I mean, the people who analyze this business, because it's hugely lucrative, they'll say, okay, you know, Malaysia is at a stage where it'll buy a used iPhone 8, but it won't buy the 7. That's too old. So the 7 should probably have to go to Myanmar, you know.

And the 6S, the market for that, because of where income levels are and where technology is turning over, the market for that's going to be, say, in, you know, Madagascar or wherever it is. You know, so it's that granular, and the demand is huge on a number of levels. I mean, one, it's cheaper technology, but two, everybody in the emerging markets wants to get online. That's where the action's at. Commerce, it takes place on WhatsApp in India.

It takes place on WhatsApp all over Africa, but you need a phone that can run WhatsApp to do that. So people want to get their hands on phones and the easiest way to get your hand on a phone that's not going to break down is get one that's been massively pre- in Europe or North America, you know, or Japan. So you said that we often have this idea that we're dumping those things on other countries. How do I mean, how do people in those countries think about this trade? Like what you're

doing is you're telling me a story that's sort of complicating my moral reasoning about all these things, right? Like I try to hold onto my phone an extra length of time because I don't want to create more electronics waste. But you're telling me,

hold on a second, someone's going to get use out of it. So now I'm trying to think about how that changes my decision to buy. And, you know, we feel morally positive about bringing our stuff to goodwill. But I've heard, oh, wait, not all the stuff goes where you think it does. But you're telling me again, there's this like really vital industry going on behind the scenes. So, yeah, I mean, how how should we how do we feel about that? I personally feel pretty good about it. I mean, you know, let me answer in a couple ways. One, you know, if you're an environmentalist, if you care about carbon emissions and changing climate, you know, our number one goal should be to reduce carbon emissions, you know, of the stuff that're buying, the best way to lower your carbon footprint is to have your stuff last longer because you're not buying as much of it. You know, and we know looking at all kinds of studies, including Apple puts out a study every year when it puts out a new phone, what is the

carbon footprint of its new phone? And the biggest part of the carbon footprint of an iPhone is the manufacturing process. So the less we manufacture these things and the longer we use them, you know, you're lowering the carbon footprint. So in that sense, I feel very good about it. But from an electronic standpoint, I also feel very good about it because the secondhand trade gives people access to technology. It allows them to sort of get on the train of, you know, moving up the income ladder, being able to start businesses, of being able to access e-learning, of being able to do all the things that we do with our phones and improve their livelihoods. And it's not just phone, it's computers as well. And so if you go to any

country where that imports the stuff, I have never once seen a load of electronics dumped in a dump. What you, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way because it's not somebody in, you know, Los Angeles paying to send that load of phones to, I don't know, Ghana, so they can go into a trash dump. Why would you do that? It's cheaper to just dump it in a trash dump in LA. It's like Amazon. Somebody in Ghana is paying the shipping. They're paying for those phones because they're going to sell them. And I've been covering this trade for a long time, and that's how it always works. The people who receive the stuff, who import it, they pay for it. And let's face it, no shipping line is going to say, if you call up, Anaconda calls up, you know, Mayor's shipping line says, hey, I've got a

container full of phones. I'm just going to drop it off at the port. Could you just go dump that in the cheapest country box? It doesn't work that way. People are paying for this stuff. Now, that's not to say bad stuff doesn't happen, because it does. But generally, that's how the trade works. And that's why I feel pretty good about it. Well, I remember seeing an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show, and I can't remember which country was said. It might have been Ghana or one of the other ones. Kenya. I know the one you're talking about. Yeah. And so they talk about the secondhand trade here is so all pervasive that there is no local clothing industry, or at least the one that there is has to compete with an immense quantity of secondhand American clothes.

Right. Like if you want to make your own shirts, you're competing with every American Eagle shirt that was ever sent here from from the United States. And the folks feel conflicted about it because, OK, well on the one hand we get like pretty good clothes, pretty cheap. On the other hand, there's no way to have a local economy here based around, you know, local, local clothing making.

And so I'm wondering if you can speak to that at all. Sure. Sure. Well, I, you know, I love, I love Bourdain as a big fan.

I am a big fan, but he got it wrong on that point. And I think, yeah. And I think what he got got wrong and I think a lot of activists get wrong is that they don't pay attention to the new clothes coming into these countries because the biggest competition for their new clothing industries is not secondhand clothing. cheap clothing imported from places like Southeast Asia, South Asia, China. And their new clothing industries have been devastated by these low-cost imports in the same way that, you know, textile manufacturing in North America was devastated by, you know, low-cost clothing from China and Southeast Asia. And that's the really corrosive, you know, issue there. You know, and that started as far back as the 1990s. So even if you ban all of the secondhand clothing going into places in East Africa, and East Africa is actually the world's largest market

collectively for secondhand clothing, you would still see these local textile mills, apparel makers struggle because they're going to be struggling against low-cost clothing coming in from Southeast Asia and China. Got it. So that is the next thing I want to talk to you about is low-cost clothing and the degree to which our goods are becoming less reusable. But I got to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Adam Minter. so adam let's get back into this issue of low-cost new clothing and low-cost other goods i believe you've written about how we've got this amazing secondhand system right that like the secondhand

goods have a lot more value than we think they do. And, you know, this is something that we should maybe try to grow and protect in some way. But the biggest threat to it is crappy goods that can't be reused. Right, right. It's the sort of the great paradox inherent in the whole trade. And I think we all kind of know that's a problem. I mean, how many times have you said, well, they just don't make it like they used to. And if not you, your parents or grandparents said it. And we all kind of know it. I sort of knew it, but I didn't entirely believe it until I started spending time in the sorting rooms at Goodwills.

I started spending time in the sorting rooms at Goodwills. And that's really an interesting experience because I would sit there with primarily the women who do the work, who go through the clothing, look at it, evaluate the brand, evaluate the fabric. And what they started telling me is, you know, this seam is not sewn as well as it used to. This fabric is thinner. is not sewn as well as it used to. This fabric is thinner. You know, this brand that we used to be able to put a ticket for $4.99 on, we're now putting a $2.99 ticket on because you can see it's already worn out. And after a couple more washes, it's going to wear out further.

And what Goodwill has found, because so much of the clothing coming in now is just of this lower quality. It's the fast fashion, the forever 21s, but even not just those, even well-known brands that we've always associated with quality. Again, they're just not making them as well. The fabrics aren't just, they're just not making as well. More of that stuff is going to the rag makers. More of that stuff is going into the dumpster. And so Goodwills, you know, a lot of Goodwills find themselves needing to collect even more clothing than they used to to put the same amount on the floor and to save the same to make the same amount. And I mean, it's an actual phenomenon and it really has. I don't want to say it has Goodwills and thrift stores alarmed, but it certainly has them concerned.

You know, the good news is Americans don't have any hesitation about throwing away lots of clothes. So the flow still keeps coming in. But again, more and more of it just is not marketable on that floor. Because as we said earlier, one of the things people want from a secondhand good is the massive pre-testing, you know, the durability. And increasingly, that's just not the case. You want the jacket that has been worn outside every day for five years and still hey it's not in fashion anymore but doesn't have any burst seams it's still warm it's still big and poofy you don't want the thing from h&m that i remember like when i

first started going to like an h&m and it felt like if you just as you were browsing the racks like the clothes would just fall apart like tissue paper in your hands are so thin and and barely constructed. And you'd wear the clothes for six months and go like, this is useless to anybody. Like, right. I've only worn it 10 times and it's falling apart. And so the problem is more of that stuff's going to the landfill now from a waste perspective. the landfill now from a waste perspective. Yeah, more of it's going to the landfill. More of it may go to the rag makers, potentially, if it's all cotton. They don't want polyester. You don't want a polyester rag. It doesn't absorb very well. So yeah, more of it. And it's not just a North American problem either. I mean, you know, there's this incredible tension in developing

countries. You know, they want to buy cheap new stuff. You know, I think everybody likes to buy that new thing. Of course, I like to buy secondhand, but there's something about buying new, you know what I mean? And they want to buy that. But, you know, the stuff that they are able to afford to buy is, again, of the lowest quality. And manufacturers, especially Chinese manufacturers, are very good at manufacturing so they can meet that price point. So they'll make a really cheap good so they can sell that shirt that, you know, can sell in Kenya. But that shirt they can sell in Kenya, maybe it only lasts a few washes, you know. And so the quality of the stuff that you're finding in these countries is even lower.

And what's interesting about that is that consumers in these countries know it. You know, they will say, I heard it over and over, especially with electronics, we don't want to buy new Chinese stuff because they make it for us, meaning they're making it very cheaply so they can sell it at a cheap price. We want that secondhand stuff from North America because it's made for you, you know, which is just a mind blowing revelation. But it's in some sense, in some sense, it's a real tribute to Chinese manufacturing because they can take the shirt you're making and make it at a price point, better quality for sale where you are, and then make the same shirt, same colors, looks the same, and make it for somebody in Kenya and sell it for 20% of the price. But the problem is you can probably wash it 25, 30, 40 times. In Kenya, they're going to wash it at most three to five. And that's, and that's a

really interesting, um, phenomenon, um, disturbing phenomenon in a lot of ways. And I don't think I've completely gotten my head around it, but it's happening. I feel like a connection to that, going back to electronics must be how much harder it is to repair electronics now. Yes. That like Apple, Apple's the famous example that, you know, an Apple laptop, you know, 10 years ago, you could sort of dismantle and service yourself if you were good enough to do it, or you could bring it to a third-party repair shop. And now when you buy a new Mac, everything is glued in.

Like anyone who's tried to have a single piece repaired on a Mac knows that, well, they basically just replaced the entire computer because they charge you for that if you're no longer under warranty. But, you know, the ability of, you know, anyone other than Apple to maintain these things and resell them is being reduced. Is that also happening across the pipeline? And is that affecting this pipeline? Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, Apple, and I'm not sure if Apple was the first company to make it impossible to change the battery in your phone.

You know, back when I had a flip phone, you know, a dumb phone. Yeah. I mean, you just, you know, oh, the battery's going low. I'll just take it out, you know, open the back, take it out, put another one in. Now you need a screwdriver, razor blades, everything to get in that phone. And it's been great for Apple for two reasons. One, they can charge a lot for changing the batteries. But two, I think in most people's minds, at least in wealthy countries, they're like, oh, when the battery is dying, it's time for a new phone,

which is amazing. What an amazing transformation of consumer psychiatry, psychology. But the interesting thing is- We used to be a society that, hey, learn to fix your own car, right? And now our cars are the same place. I mean, try to repair a Prius. It's like repairing an iPhone.

Yeah, but the interesting thing is is that economics sort of creates necessities and creates skills. And I think probably some of the most enjoyable time I spent reporting in the last five years was, again, in developing countries where people are taking these devices that we think of as not repairable. And they're repairing them because they have an economic incentive to do it, you know, because they are so expensive. Think of, you know, Cuba repairing. Cuba for decades was famous for repairing old American automobiles from the 50s and 60s. Why did they do that? Because they couldn't import many cars, but to develop the skills, develop businesses and actually do it. And the sophistication of the repairs that are being done in places in Africa and Southeast Asia are unbelievable. You know, I, a few years ago, I had a Sony laptop. They don't

make them anymore, but it had just stopped working. And I brought it with me to Ghana and brought it to a repair shop that I'd been spending time at reporting on. And they opened it up and they're like, oh, this circuit on the board is completely fried. And I'm like, well, that's the end of it. And they're like, what are you talking about? We'll just take that chip off and we'll put, you know, we'll solder another one on. And I'm like, first of all, nobody in the U.S. would do that. I mean, there's no economic incentive to do it, but find somebody who has the skills to do it. You know, those skills aren't there. And I saw that over and over and over in Ghana, not just with electronics, but, you know, with cars where, you know, there's, you know, secondhand cars are huge in Ghana. And what a lot

of people do in Ghana is they go to the U.S. and they go to insurance companies that have cars that have been totaled in accidents in the U.S., meaning they're not going to be given back to the owners. They just give them the cash. Well, the Ghanaians will buy those cars and bring them back to Ghana and fix them. Totaled cars. Wow. They're paying to ship a totaled car. First of all, the cost of shipping must be extraordinarily low to have that be worth the money. Well, what they do is they won't just send one. They'll put them in containers. You can actually, I've seen it done.

You see it. There's a couple of businesses in the Bronx that do this where they'll put three cars in a shipping container, basically hang them on chains within the container, and they're swinging freely in the containers. It's the most amazing thing you've ever seen. Wow. So you can put three cars in there and then they ship them. And I think from New York to Ghana, gosh, I think it's at least the last I looked, I think it's about $3,500 to send a container over and then there's taxes and everything. But it ends up being a really lucrative business for the people who do it. And again, it speaks to the fact that they've

developed the skills, but they also have the economic incentive to do it. And so that makes these repair skills that we think we've lost here, you know, really thrive in these places. And that's, it's really fun to see. But some of these companies, I know that a new trend in electronics is to literally make it impossible to repair the devices because um i can't remember exactly what part it was but i believe apple did this where apple software will recognize that you have done a third-party repair and then oh this is for iphone screens that they were doing this um if there was a third-party iphone screen replacement it would detect that that had happened and make the rest of the phone not work and you, for a company

that's as vertically integrated, tightly controlled as Apple, that means, well, unless you're going to completely sideload a pirated version of the operating system, which is a whole other thing to do, then it makes the repair impossible. Are we seeing more of that? And is that a threat? We absolutely are. And yeah, that's a great example of where they did that a few years ago where, yeah, you couldn't get the True Tone colors, I think, off the screen at one point unless the screen was replaced at an Apple facility. And I think they did lock the screens. They also have with their new, in the last year or two, they've inserted a chip in the

actual laptops that they make. I think it's called the T2 chip. That basically means that, that, you know, once this device is locked, you know, once you've closed, if somebody, you know, gets rid of a computer and they don't give the password to whoever is buying it, that, that computer will never be open. It's, it's not able to be used. Right. I actually read about this because it's a side effect of actually very good security practices on apple's part that like you can sort of by default encrypt your entire hard drive and so that like the computer cannot be booted in any way or erased unless you provide the password but that means that if you don't unlock it before you donate the computer uh then it's completely

useless it's a brick, yeah. And so if you're listening to this, if you are upgrading to a new Mac and you've got an old one, make sure that you follow instructions for how to decrypt the drive and wipe it and put a new fresh version of OSX on it before you do that, because otherwise it might literally be useless

to the next person who is trying to just make use out of it and make sure the thing doesn't have to go into the landfill. Yeah. Two, two points on that one. It's not entirely useless. Here was something else I found really surprising is, uh, there is a market out there for bricked computers and what they're used for is parts. So, you know, the screens, then you get the drive out there. I mean, there's, there's certain parts that you can get out of there and there's, there's a really thriving market for that. Now give the passion for goodness sake. We don't want bricks.

But you do see people buying, and it's not just overseas, but even within North America, you'll see people buying old devices, even bricked ones, because they want the parts out of them. The good news is at least there's people trying to stop this practice. I mean, I've talked about it a lot over the last couple of years in my work for Bloomberg as well, is right to repair laws, which would basically force companies like Apple to, you know, make available its software keys

so that somebody who buys a used computer, a repair shop that, you know, wants to fix something where somebody's lost their password, whatever it is, can actually do it. You know, and that's not just about the environment. You know, it's also property rights as well. You know, I grew up feeling like if I buy something, I own it. You know, but the problem with these new approaches where you have these software locks, you know, it's not always the case. You know, you're ceding some of your sort of traditional property rights,

the right to fix your stuff, the right to do with your stuff what you want to, to the companies that make it. Yeah, that's really interesting because I've always seen those right to repair laws, which are a kind of law in general I very much support, as being about my rights, as being, hey, I should have the ability to repair my stuff and use it as long as possible. And I'm frustrated that the company is taking that away from me and forcing me to go through them and and removing my right to tinker. Right. But what you're also describing is that by fighting those laws, which I know Apple has fought against a right to repair laws very strenuously. the entire supply chain less environmentally friendly, more wasteful, because they're reducing the ability of all of humanity to make better use of these things instead of them hitting the landfill. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, it's not just about software locks either. It's about

parts, you know. Ultimately, you know, if you want to fix stuff, you need to have access to parts. And one of the things that Apple, you know, we can pick on Apple, but it's not just Apple. I mean, you know, it's everybody. They're the best at it. They're not the only ones trying to do it. They're just extremely excellent at it. Yeah. Yeah. They're excellent at it. But I mean, it's camera manufacturers. Nikon, you know, is, you know, is restricted the, you know, access to its manuals and to parts. You know, you have to get your stuff fixed at the authorized service center. Well, what happens if you're in a place that doesn't have an authorized service center? They don't have access to the parts. That's the other side of this. Again, it just makes it hard for people

to maintain their stuff. Now, it may very well be good for Apple to be selling more stuff. They've indicated in the past, for example, that when they expanded access to battery replacements, it actually hurt sales of new phones. So that's very much in their mind. But ultimately, I think it's bad all around. And if anything, like auto manufacturers should have taught Apple is there is money to be made by selling parts and offering service. And if you expand access to it, that's going to be good for you. You know, there's there's people who are going to use that stuff. Thinking about this in an environmental context, this really opens my mind a lot, because something I've talked about in my past work is that recycling as an American approach to dealing with waste is way overblown. We put way too much emphasis on recycling.

way overblown. We put way too much emphasis on recycling. And, you know, the here in L.A., we've got the black bin and the blue bin. And I feel good about myself when I put stuff in the blue bin. But the fact is, most of that stuff is unrecyclable and that or at least a very good amount of it is. And we need to be focusing more on the first two R's, reduce, reuse, recycle. more on the first two R's, reduce, reuse, recycle. And what this is sort of telling me is that, wow, the reuse part is much more massive than I thought. I thought reuse meant me turning an old tire into a planter or something like that. But what you're saying is so many of these things, we're talking about clothing and electronics, but it must be, I imagine it's true of other product categories as well, to a certain extent. They're being reused massively around the globe.

Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, you know, there's one of the things that I thought was so interesting as I really started diving into secondhand is there is somebody who wants your used stuff somewhere in the world. The hard part is how do you connect the buyer and the seller? do you connect the buyer and the seller right now that you know that person's uh living in kinshasa and you're in san francisco you know it's the the cost of shipping that stuff may not be worth it to anybody but but that's the cool thing about this business is that it's sort of scaled in such a way that a lot of that stuff can get to that person in kinshasa you know and so so that's that's the the really cool part of some massive business and business. And again, as I said earlier, I mean, especially in places like West Africa, like East Africa, retail is secondhand. So there is an outlet for this stuff.

The bad news is that generally speaking, the course of the global economy, notwithstanding the fact that we're in the midst of a pandemic, but has been upward. And as people become more affluent, they want to buy their own new stuff, you know, and they do want to transition out of that. And so that's a longstanding concern, not just of mine, but I mean, a lot of people in the secondhand business say, you know, what happens as, you know, East Africa becomes more affluent? Well, they continue to want to buy secondhand stuff from Canada, from the United States? And I think the answer probably is not in the volumes that they do. And so, yes, right now you have this marvelous system, but the long-term prognosis for it probably is not growth. It's probably shrinkage. And despite the fact that it's happening, it's not like, oh my God, the global supply chain is actually really good and not hurting the environment that much.

Because look at all this reusing that's happening under our noses. It's better than if it didn't exist. But at the same time, we're still producing too much stuff and using it too quickly and throwing too much out. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, the thing for me that was most surprising, most troubling, most interesting, all at the same time in doing my work on secondhand was just how much of it there is. You know, and for all of this thriving trade that's out there, and it is thriving, and it uses millions of tons of this stuff, There's so much stuff more that isn't getting used.

You know, and, you know, I remember being in Mississauga, Ontario, being at a very massive, you know, three hockey rink sized warehouse where they were sorting clothes for export. And in one corner, you know, were piles of jeans to the ceiling, you know, and the ceiling was three stories high. And I said, what's going to happen with those? And they said, those are going to go to the landfill. And I said, what do you mean? People love used jeans. These are low quality, you know, Walmart jeans. There's no market for them secondhand in North America. People in developing countries don't want them. You know,

you can't use jeans as a rag, you know, to wipe your, you know, wipe down a bar counter. So ultimately, you know, that stuff's going to go to the landfill or maybe it's going to be, you know, to wipe your, you know, wipe down a bar counter. So ultimately, you know, that stuff's going to go to the landfill or, or maybe it's going to be, you know, in an incinerator and turned into energy, uh, you know, to power the lights, you know, and, and, and so there were just, there were so many cases of that. And in so many cases of things that just simply can't be reused, I mean, every Goodwill you go to in the back room, there's going to be a bunch of bowling balls in the back because people donate bowling balls and nobody wants a secondhand bowling ball. Like, I mean, to a store, bowling balls everywhere, you know, and I just, I mean, it's just like, what are you doing? Use bowling ball. There's nothing to be done. Maybe that's a business to start. I don't know. You know, and, you know,

there's lots of examples like that. And so, you know, I mean, over the years that I've worked on this and it, you know, it, it, I was never much of a shopper in the first place, but I certainly became less of one spending time in Goodwills. You just you just start seeing all this stuff and you start going home and you say, what's going to happen to all this crap on my shelves? Yeah. And, you know, and it just sort of it wasn't even a I want to save the planet. I'm going to stop buying stuff. It was more of a, oh, man, I just don't want to buy any more stuff. You know, this is the equivalent of you go to the meat processing facility and you, and you become a vegetarian. Exactly. Perfect parallel. That's, that's amazing because you're also so impressed by this process,

but you still had that reaction to it. Yeah. And it was sort of a long-term thing, but you know, I found, you know, I spent a lot of time, I think some of the most interesting reporting I've ever done was spending time with professionals who clean out homes for people who are downsizing into retirement or they've passed away and families need help cleaning out the stuff. And I spent time with people in the U.S. and Japan who do that work, very similar businesses. And to a person, to a person, they all say the same thing in the course of a day with them. Oh, I don't buy stuff anymore. You know, even though they're important gears in this whole global market, you know, because they do sort of top level sorting. They're seeing a lot of good stuff, you know, and they know how lucrative it can be. In any case, when you go into somebody's

house and clean it out, there's potential to make a lot of money. You know, they don't want to do it. You know, they'll say things like in North America, they'll say, you know, when you go into somebody's house and clean it out there's potential to make a lot of money you know they don't want to do it you know they'll say things like in north america they'll say you know when i go to a wedding now i don't buy off the registry unless it's like experiences gift cards you know to go to a restaurant you know i'm not i'm not buying wedding china for sure wedding china don't buy wedding china the world doesn't need any more wedding china yeah it's it's it's uh it's you know they're traumatized by all the stuff they've seen yeah yeah yeah i mean i i i don't want to i mean i think i to some extent was as well just doing this kind of reporting it becomes disturbing after a while yeah talk to me a little bit about that final r about recycling um yeah you know we've talked we've talked so much about the reusing

piece you just talked to us about the need to reduce. But in terms of our stuff being broken down for parts, melted down into slag and being made into new things, you know, we've, I've talked about in my work again, about how recycling in many ways is an idea that's been sold to us by goods manufacturers in order to assuage our guilt, right.

Rather than refilling the soda bottles at the beverage distributing place like we used to do. Now we buy plastic and we throw it in the recycle bin. We say, oh, it'll probably turn into something new one day and we don't feel so guilty about it. When in reality, very little of that stuff is. Do you share that view or have you looked at the supply chain more specifically? Yeah, so I remain a big fan of most recycling. And most of what's recycled in the world is not plastics. I think we focus a lot in recent years on plastics because of the ocean plastics crisis.

Because we have so much fucking plastic. Yeah. But for example, half the steel supply in the United States is recycled steel. And that's a number that doesn't get thrown around very much. You know, every toilet paper manufacturer in the United States, North America, and Europe uses some amount of recycled content in its toilet paper, which is pretty key during a pandemic. You know, these are essential components to making the stuff that we use, whether it be cars, whether it be Amazon boxes,

which have huge amounts of recycled content in them. And so, you know, if you cut off that supply, if you tell people, ah, recycling is a big scam, we're not going to recycle these cars anymore. We're not going to recycle these cardboard boxes anymore. You're forcing manufacturers who rely upon it. And every manufacturer of any scale in the United States, Europe, anywhere relies on recycling to some extent, you're going to force them then to say, okay, well, I need raw materials. Where am I going to get them? And I'd never make that argument. We've always focused on, hey, this is not a free pass, right?

Recycle what you can, but it's that first R that's most important. Reduce first. Yeah. From an environmental perspective, I'm all about reducing. I mean, and that's where I come from. And if you can't reduce, reuse. But I get defensive about recycling because the fact of matter is we're all going to be using new stuff, you know, for a long time. And we are going to want recycling to be a part of that supply chain. And we just will. Because if we're not recycling stuff, we're going to be cutting forests.

You know, we're going to be digging open pit, you know, iron ore mines. We're going to be using sulfide mining up at Lake Superior, you know, to get copper because we're going to need copper. And so, you know, that stuff's going to happen anyway, because, you know, for the foreseeable future, we're going to be living on earth and manufacturing on earth. And so the more we can recycle stuff, the more that we can encourage the recycling of that stuff, the better overall it is for the environment. But by all means, by all means, reduce your

consumption as much as possible. Yeah. One thing that really strikes me in hearing you talk about this is how much the job of doing this reuse and this recycling also is really degraded work it falls upon folks who are working in really tough conditions i think about recycling again here in la actually this is true in new york as well when i live there that uh you know one of the best forms of recycling is, uh, you know, aluminum can recycling is the deposit recycling where you get a nickel back. Um, and that stuff is being recycled. My understanding is far more efficiently than the stuff you just toss in

the bin because it's like sort of pre-sorted when you go to the, the, when you go to the machine at the supermarket and you put it in a little crusher and it gives you your can it's, you know, uh, that's a supply of just raw aluminum basically basically, that can be turned into new cans. And so there's folks who go around in New York and L.A. who go through people's blue bins, who the people who are not going to be bothered at the houses of the people who are not going to be bothered to take the stuff to the supermarket and get the five cents back.

It's not worth the money for them. They go root around in other people's recycling bins in order to extract that stuff. Right. And I look at that and I think, man, those people are actually doing valuable work. That person pushing the shopping cart because they're sorting my recycling for me and they're extracting value from the marketplace by doing it. And they're using that to support themselves. Why on earth are they having to push a shopping cart around my neighborhood at 1 a.m. in order to do that and go through my stinky trash? That's awful. Once I realized that, I started like separating out my redeemable, all my LaCroix cans and then putting like literally just putting them on the street so it was easier to access. And now that I've been working with unhoused folks in my neighborhood, I actually will bring them my cans because I know they do recycling. I'm like, here you go.

And they're, you know, they're, they're grateful to receive them. Um, but I, I wonder about that as a microcosm of, is this a larger issue? Like those folks that you describe in Ghana, who are going through our old electronics, um, are they exposing themselves to risks that, uh, we would rather not put them through in order to deal with all of our waste? Sure. Well, this is a question and a profession very close to my heart. As I told you when we first started, I come from a recycling family. My great-grandfather was a scrap peddler, Galveston, Texas, picking stuff off the streets. You know, and, you know, as a teenager, I actually, you know, I never scavenged streets.

But my father would put me during the summers and after school, he put us, we had a little can machine where I would actually work with those people and, you know, weigh their cans and pay them out. And it's not a nice job either. You know, believe me, especially in the middle of summer when somebody is bringing in, you know, Saturday night's beer cans. You know, you've got bees buzzing around. It's the shittiest job in the world. That's another story altogether. But it does get to the point where it's not pleasant work, you know? And we did it. We had a little junkyard. You know, what I've always called recycling and peddling and scavenging is it's the entrepreneurial opportunity of last resort. You know, if you can't do anything else and you want the chance to make your own living, this is available to you. It is not always clean work.

It is not always safe work. And there are organizations around the world who try to work with scrap peddlers, scrap scavengers, whatever you want to call them, you know, and work with governments to ensure that they at least have basic equipment. It's been really important, for example, during COVID, because, you know, if you're picking up, you know, used food containers, used beverage containers, potentially that contains, you know, or at least has on the surface, you know, virus. You know, we still don't know if that's the case or not. I wouldn't want to oversell that, but it's possible. And so you had a real effort in places like Brazil, I know, parts of Indonesia, where you had NGOs at least trying to get face masks and gloves to some of these workers. Now, they won't always wear them. And that's something else I've learned. I

mean, I've seen, you know, some of, I've seen the worst recycling you can possibly imagine. I mean, things you would not want to even think about. And more often than not, you'll see people not wearing safety equipment. And you ask them why not? They'll say, well, it's too hot out. Well, yeah, I guess it is. But you're breathing cyanide, bud. You know what you think? But it's like, well, then you got to buy that mask. You got to buy that N95 mask. And so you have to take it from that perspective. So it can be, and it is occasionally quite dangerous. But I think it's a profession that people do enter in. Choice is a tough word, but there is a choice in doing it. And in many cases, it's the only choice available. So I'm very careful about stigmatizing it too much and turning the people

who do the business into victims. Because I think one of the great things about it is that they're actually, to some extent, in most cases that I've encountered, I've encountered some, you know, are able to empower themselves by this kind of work. Yeah, it sounds like it's tough, though. Yeah, it's tough, though. It's tough. Yeah, I've heard. It sounds like, you know, once you start talking about like the textile industry, for instance, in developing countries, that it's a brutal industry. Sweat shop labor is a real thing. At the same time, plenty of countries have this is like the first industry that they use to

raise up their economy. And both things can be true. Right. Yeah. We can we can decry that those horrible working conditions and we don't need to accept them. But also there's this other part of the story as well that we need to take into account. Yeah. You know, and it's I've always said, you know, it's it's people really want recycling to be this black and white issue or black and green issue. And I've spent my whole life around it and it's not it's gray zones and people are never satisfied, you know, with gray zones. They're not. They're just not. I'm not either. But, you know, it's hard. And, you know, a lot of people come to the topic of recycling saying, wanting to say this is bad for the environment, this is bad for people. But then you've got to present me some of the alternatives, you know. And that's,

you know, and that's where it gets difficult. Okay, we'll shut it down. But then what are we going to do? Are we going to go clear cut some forest so you have the cardboard for your Amazon box? Do you want some sulfide mining on Lake Superior so we can have that copper? I mean, you could say, well, you can hand out masks to all these people. You can hand out gloves to all these people who are doing this work. You can. Will they use them? Do they want to use them?

Do they want to pay for them after you stop giving them out? You know, it's not a simple, you know, again, black and green equation. Not at all. But the point that I try to make is that recycling is not the solution to our problems. Like and it is often sold as the solution to our problems. Like I'll just give an example. Like, I'll just give an example. I was at the Environmental Media Awards, which is an award ceremony in Hollywood for shows that have environmental messages. And we have to say we won one for our show.

But one of the presenters, I won't say who, but a celebrity said, hey, guess what? I have a box presented at the beginning of the show. I have a boxed water company and all of our boxes are recyclable and guess what the stage that i'm standing on is made from our recycled boxes how great is that you know yeah and i'm sitting there thinking dude like you're still shipping water around using fossil fuels by truck right when people can get it through pipes this is not a green industry the fact that you are you know you're talking about the recyclability of the packaging has nothing to do with the fact that this is an industry that like we need to, frankly, eliminate if we're going to solve the climate crisis. Right. Well, this gets to something we talked about earlier, is that for any manufactured good, the carbon footprint of that good, the biggest part, you know, usually 75% plus is in the manufacturing. It's when you make the good, you know, and that's, and, and, you know, usually less than 5% is in the disposal

process. You know, the disposal process is, you know, driving it to the landfill and then over a hundred years, it emits some methane, you know, but for some reason we spend all our time focused on that 5% and so little time focused on that 75% and it drives me nuts, you know, because I mean, I look, I've spent my whole career sort of in the muck, in the trash and the recycling. Sure. Spend more time on it. But, but if you really want to look at it from a carbon perspective, why are we spending all this time on the disposal of stuff when we should be looking at how we're making stuff in the first place? I've got another great example of this. The salad chain Sweetgreen.

Have you heard of this chain? I think I have. It's a fast, casual. They do salads for office workers who just need to, like, load some lettuce and chicken into their mouths as quickly as possible on a lunch break. Right. And they're trying to be very healthy and green and what they do is uh they've got no uh silverware they've got it's all disposable silverware right but they say well all of it is compostable right we can compost all of it right um and it's made of like plant

proteins or whatever like space age plastics um so even if you go dine in there, you don't get, you know, a fork and a knife. You get like a a a plastic fork or a plant based fork and like a paper bowl thing. And what we what was revealed by some investigative reporting is that even though they say it is compostable, they cannot find anyone who will compost it. cannot find anyone who will compost it. And in fact, they, they were working with a company that said they were composting it, but was in fact throwing it into a landfill because that,

that like waste management company couldn't figure out how to compost it either. And like, there's all this, they're, they're promising this thing of like, wow, you know, we're gonna,

you know, we're going to compost it at the end when the real solution is just use forks and knives, like just have metal silverware and hire a fucking dishwasher to wash the shit. That would be the greener solution. But they've decided not to do that. And so it's that promise that offends me. The promise of great ability, biodegradability is the one that gets on my nerves.

You know, and we've, you know, biodegradable plastics. And there's been really great studies. There's a brilliant academic in Georgia, Jenna Janbeck, who's, you know, actually just taking these biodegradable plastics and sort of dumped them in the ocean and let them sit there for a while. And she pulls them up after a couple of years, she and her lab. And lo and behold, they're still plastic. You know, they haven't magically gone to green heaven. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And, you know, and again, but, you know, people know people love that you know that bio part of biodegradable but it you know it doesn't mean a thing and actually achieving biodegradability i mean you know in ideal circumstances you need to have these fermenters and it needs to be at these very high temperatures it's all bullshit you know you know but we're all looking for this way to feel better about our consumption you know yeah and and you know some of it is companies say oh well look we've got these you But we're all looking for this way to feel better about our consumption. Yeah. And some of it is companies say, oh, well, look, we've got these compostable forks and knives. Feel better about coming here or whatever it is. And ultimately, I think the best way to feel better about your consumption is to do less of it.

Yeah. That's been my approach. Well, so why is that so hard for us to do? Because we all sort of know that in the back of our minds, right? But it is – you wrote about where we started this conversation was your observation that we are much more focused ethically on the moment that we throw something out than on the moment when we buy something. That we're far more engaged in that moment of disposal than in the moment of acquiring. Why is that? And why is it so hard for us to reduce?

That's hard for me to do it. Yeah, yeah. Anybody it is. I don't want to hold myself out as, you know, as a paragon of virtue. You know, I struggle with the same stuff. You know, I mean, we live in consumer societies, you know, the way we live in cities. You know, we're not out in the fields, you know, cultivating our food and bringing it home to cook it, you know, in our bare hands. We need packaging.

You know, you can't live in a city without some degree of packaging, even if it is reusable packaging. You know, when you start adding these things together and with the powerful marketing that goes on and the desire for social status, because, you know, so much of consumption is status driven. You know, these are all things that are just tightly wound up in our culture that make it hard to let go of these things. I mean, you know, I don't think there's any single, you know, answer and any single, you know, piece of advice that you can give to get people to say, I'm going to let go. I mean, my best piece of advice, and it's very grim advice is, you know, after one of your relatives passes away, save the clean out for yourself. And I guarantee you, after you go through that process of letting go of somebody's stuff who you really loved, you are going to think very differently

about acquisition, you know. And that's why I'm somewhat optimistic in a limited way about consumption is I think sort of at least in the U.S., there's a lot of people about to go through that process. The boomers are aging, you know, and so there's going to be a lot of people and they are one of the most acquisitive generations ever. Houses full of stuff, you know, like never before. And I think it's going to be a very painful process. And I think we'll see books written, you know, over the next 10 and 20 years about just how hard this process was to go through it. You know, I don't want to say I'm optimistic or hopeful, but I suspect that'll have a cultural impact. You know, that's just a guess. What do you hope people take away from your work when they read it? Or what do you hope folks take away from this conversation? Well, I think, one, I always want people to, you know, I think it's easy for folks to look down on people who do recycling, who do secondhand or who buy secondhand. And I always try and emphasize the people who do this work, the people who want these products, they want it for the same reasons you do. They want to make a living.

They want something that they like to wear. There's dignity in it, just as there's dignity in anything, you know, any of us do. And it's a topic very close to my heart because it runs very deep in my family. You know, I always, when I'm, you know, in these places where I see scrap peddlers, you know, I love to talk to them thing I want people to take away is simply that, you know, is the reduce equation as you've hit it so hard. I mean, there are lots of ways to mend the planet, you know, that are sold to us. But ultimately, the most important one is that reduction of consumption. And it's not easy for anyone. And again, like I said just a moment ago, I don't want to hold myself out as a monk, you know, because I'm not.

I'm not a paragon of, you know, minimalism, but you know, I do my best and I guess, you know, we're all human and that's the best we can ask of each other. I think I, amen to that. I also think what this conversation has done for me is it's going to make me, it's fired me up even more about buying stuff used. When you go to the Goodwill, man, that is, that really is one of the greenest places around, isn't it? If you're shopping there. And one thing I, the one piece of, one recommendation I've given when I've talked to people about shopping is, you know, if you can afford to buy better, you know, and what I mean by that is, you know, if you have to buy something new, when you're buying it,

say, is this something that I can give to the Goodwill at some point and they're going to be able to sell it on? And if you can afford to buy that better thing, buy that better thing. Buy that thing with the idea that it's going to have multiple owners. You can't do that with every object you buy. But there are objects you are going to buy new. You think in those terms, if you can afford to do it. Not everybody can. It's a privilege to be able to do that in a lot of cases, but it does mean that your stuff is going to continue living and bring, you know, use and happiness perhaps to other people. And again, you know, lower that overall carbon footprint because we're going to be manufacturing less. Amen to that. Adam, thank you so much for being here. This was an awesome

conversation. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you so much to Adam Minter for coming on the show. Check out his book, Secondhand, Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, wherever books are sold. Hey, but get it on bookshop.org. That's a good alternative to Amazon, in my personal opinion. And hey, that is it for us this week on Factually. My name is Adam Conover. I want to thank our producers, Dana Wickens and Sam Roudman, our engineers, Ryan Connor and Brett Morris, Andrew WK for our theme song.

You can find me at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media or at adamconover.net. If you want to send a thought to this podcast, send it to factually at adamconover.net. And hey, we'll see you next time on Factually. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week. That was a hate gun podcast.