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. MORE
Category Archives: Environment
* Binod Chaudhary Helps Rebuild Nepal
By Susan Cunningham
Forbes Asia
This story appears in the September 2015 issue of Forbes Asia.
After a 7.8 Richter scale earthquake rocked central Nepal on April 25, Binod K. Chaudhary and two of his sons rushed from Chitwan National Park to Kathmandu to organize relief efforts. The company’s head office was heavily damaged, but no matter. He immediately ordered that eight schools operated by one of his businesses be turned into shelters, distributing the company’s famed Wai Wai instant noodles and other food, as well as juice, water and medical supplies. He also arranged for health care workers to reach victims in the 12 districts most severely hit by the country’s worst natural disaster in 81 years.
The quake killed more than 8,600 in Nepal, displaced 450,000, triggered fatal avalanches on Mount Everest, and severely damaged centuries-old historic buildings including the palace squares of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan.
Since then Nepal’s first billionaire has pledged $2.5 million through his Chaudhary Foundation to restore schools and homes destroyed or damaged by the quake. The foundation will bear all the costs of building 1,000 transitional bamboo-and-plaster homes and is working with other donors to construct another 9,000. MORE
* Biking the wilds of Bangkok
Bicycling atop a clogged canal, slapped by the branches of tea trees and buzzed by cicadas, is a rejuvenating experience. A little bit jungle, a little bit village, Bang Kra Jao takes only a few minutes to reach from southeastern Bangkok by hopping a longtail boat across the Chao Phraya River. Because it’s a protected conservation area, this spit of greenery …
This piece appeared in the November 2008 issue of Reader’s Digest Asia.
* Saving and selling water
BANGKOK–No doubt government officials have treated the farmers of the Pai River callously, even shamefully. Dam construction firms will probably earn excessive profits. Some animals may suffer and yet more trees will fall.
But probably many compassionate nature lovers would nevertheless conclude that dams and diversion projects in the Salween Basin aren’t so bad in themselves; the problems are in the execution. Progress has a price. Irrigated farms, households and industries elsewhere need water. Mae Hong Son province has water but not many people. The few must sacrifice for the majority. Or must they? Continue reading
Susan J Cunningham 
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