Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter (Bloomsbury, 2019)
Reviewed by Susan Cunningham
Los Angeles Review of Books
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE out-of-style clothing we dump in the charity bin? Or the decades of furnishings downsizing empty-nesters donate to the local thrift shop? What follows the surge of self-satisfaction we feel as responsible recyclers, along with the hope that someone else will get a little pleasure from our discarded things? In Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, the intrepid Adam Minter sets off to find some answers, traveling from his home in Malaysia to interview cleaners, sellers, sorters, exporters, and importers in Japan, India, West Africa, and North America.
As with his first book, Junkyard Planet (2013), which focused on the far-flung fates of discarded scrap metals, Minter, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, does his best to sift sense from dodgy data. But it’s his vibrant sketches of entrepreneurial characters and his dives into obscure industrial histories that make a persuasive case: Discarded goods are becoming a big environmental problem.
Minter’s sources are very good at what they do. Minnesota antique dealers, thrift-store workers in the US Southwest, Mexican “pickers” at an Arizona Goodwill outlet, immigrants sorting and pricing huge bales of used clothing in Canada and Benin, the Japanese certified “cleanout professional” rummaging through the possessions of the recently deceased … all take pride in their knowledge and ability to make quick decisions. Almost instinctively, they know what the ultimate buyer in Mexico or Nigeria will want — or, all too often, that there isn’t an ultimate buyer at all. More likely than not, those yellowed dress shirts, particle-board IKEA tables, and crates of vinyl albums are destined for the landfill or the incinerator. MORE
Susan J Cunningham 