What's at the root of our environmental ills? Capitalism, say some. White supremacy, say others. Waste, according to frequent Sierra contributor Edward Humes in Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World (Avery, 2024). It's "the engine driving . . . unstoppable global crises." And by "waste," he isn't just talking about picking up your litter. On the contrary, Humes calls Keep America Beautiful's iconic "Crying Indian" television ad in 1971 "the single most effective piece of greenwashing in history," because it focused blame not on the corporations that make and sell plastic trash but on the sorry schmucks who throw it out their car windows.

Humes delves into the psychology of disposability and how it has given consumers the hollow promise of "convenience" while doubling the profits of corporations, which can now sell their products over and over again. Half the world's plastic goes into packaging and containers, he writes, making microplastics ubiquitous in our environment. (On average, Humes notes, each of us ingests the equivalent of a credit card each week.) But waste is also about burning methane to heat homes and using gasoline for transportation—80 percent of which is wasted in the internal-combustion process. It's also about fast fashion, with clothes now as disposable as bottles of soda. Throughout the book, Humes provides smart tips, like carrying a "zero-waste kit" of reusable containers and utensils whenever you go out. He makes taking out the trash a larger project, but still one that anyone can do.