An electronic waste scrap yard in the Ghanaian capital, Accra (Photo: Getty Images)

The CapX Podcast: Where does all your rubbish go?

30 June 2023

An electronic waste scrap yard in the Ghanaian capital, Accra (Photo: Getty Images)

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Trash, garbage, litter or rubbish – whatever you call it the world is producing ever more of the stuff. But where does it all go once it’s left our colour-coded bins? And what about all those clothes you leave at the charity shop thining you’ve done a good turn?

The fascinating tapestry of grime that is the modern waste industry is documented in painstaking, illuminating detail in the new book Wasteland, written by our guest this week, the journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis.

He takes us on a journey from hulking mountains of waste on the outskirts of New Delhi to abandoned mining towns in Oklahoma and back-street repair shops in Ghana, where engineers give new life to millions of the West’s discarded gadgets.