Have you ever wondered, when aluminium cans or old newspapers are put in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably, it reaches people and places who clean up what you discard as waste and they turn it into something useful that you cannot wait to buy.

The book I am going to talk about is ?Junkyard Planet? by Adam Minter who is a veteran journalist based in Shangai and son of an American junkyard owner- the author proves to be an excellent guide to this sprawling and bewildering trade. He's covered the industry since 2002. His book is an eye opening guide to transforming our economy and environment. Minter takes the reader on a ride that shows how recycling occurs at a global level. The book highlights the after effects of automobile incineration that happened on a large scale in America in 60?s and 70?s.

Minter takes us from back-alley Chinese computer recycling operations to recycling factories capable of processing a jumbo jet's worth of trash every day. Along the way, we meet an international cast of characters who have figured out how to squeeze Silicon Valley-scale fortunes from what we all throw away. Junkyard Planet reveals how ?going green? usually means making money-and why that's often the most sustainable choice, even when the recycling methods aren't pretty. The book opens in China, at a factory that focuses solely on burnt-out Christmas-tree lights. The main point is to sell the recovered wire to the copper mills, but the insulation can be sold to a factory that makes plastic slipper soles. Towards the end, even Mr. Minter is stumped by a box of oily-looking titanium scrap he encounters in Joliet, Ill. The owner explains that titanium burns white, so the company sells it to fireworks manufacturers.

This is an industry with modest margins, so volume is paramount. Millions of tons of waste—bits of copper wire and detergent bottles and tuning forks and anything else you can think of—are bought and shipped and processed and resold every day, generating $500 billion in profits annually. Scrap employs millions of workers around the world, making it one of the most profitable industry.

With unmatched access to and insight on the waste industry, Minter traces the export of America's garbage and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. In 2012, nearly half of China's copper supply came from scrapyards, mostly American ones.

?Recycling is betterI won't write "good"for the environment. But without economicswithout supply and demand of raw materialsrecycling is nothing more than a meaningless exercise in glorifying garbage. No doubt it's better than throwing something into an incinerator, and worse than fixing something that can be refurbished. It's what you do if you can't bear to see something landfilled. Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn't mean you've recycled anything, and it doesn't make you a better, greener person: it just means you've outsourced your problem. Sometimes that outsourcing is near home and sometimes it's overseas. But wherever it goes, the global market and demand for raw materials is the ultimate arbiter.
Fortunately, if that realization leaves you feeling bad, there's always the alternative: stop buying so much crap in the first place?. Quotes from ?Junkyard Planet?

?Minter successfully resists oversimplifying the issue China currently faces - with a growing middle class demanding more raw material for new construction, the options are living with the pollution caused by recycling or the environmental consequences of mining for raw materials...Minter concludes that the solution is in the first word in the phrase, 'Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.'? –  Publishers Weekly

 Lively and entertaining...Junkyard Planet is a book for anyone interested in the environment, the economics of recycling, or a thoughtful look at the consumption we take for granted.? –  Brooklyn Bugle

 Mr. Minter's fascinating book makes clear, actions matter more than intentions.

Inputs : wsj.com, Bloomsbury.com, goodreads.com