THE SECOND-HAND TRADE: FROM RAGS TO RICHES

ADAM Minter’s Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale is eye-opening

– and even surprisingly hopeful.

Journalist Minter, who hails from two generations of junkyard owners, makes his living from writing about refuse. His previous book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, chronicled the fate of waste and international recycling. He carries on the work here by following the merchandise – and the money – from objects discarded in Minneapolis to ports as far-flung as Malaysia and Benin. The rag-and-bone trade is now a complex international business.

Anyone who has had to clean out the houses of beloved parents will feel for the unloved objects Minter follows. He begins with proliferating companies that help facilitate those poignant clean-outs.

Then it’s on to junk shops where he tracks a neverending tide of objects. As he documents, by no means do most things donated to a thrift shop sell. Next stop for the remaining flood of stuff is outlet centres, for example in the US, where they’re sold to specialists, many of whom will cross the border to resell in Mexico. Other tons go to Pakistan or Africa.

What doesn’t make the cut there is often shipped back to be broken down into rags – who knew that rags are such big business? One company that Minter studies sold millions in rags in one year. These clothes cross the ocean yet again, to be broken down and respun into new fabric in India.

Minter is no poet. His prose is statistic-rich and straightforward. He’s at his best in the chapters discussing the ecological impact of waste in terms of product durability, and encouraging companies to be more transparent about planned obsolescence.

In terms of a philosophy of wise recycling, Minter exhorts the media to “stop stigmatising the trade”.