Last August several hundred protestors gathered outside the Shanghai sales office of China Greentown Holdings, a real estate developer, holding banners with slogans such as “300,000 yuan worth of assets evaporate within five days — years of work in vain!” That loss – around $48,000 – was the difference between what the protestor had paid…
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So long, Shanghai, I’ve entered the Relocation Department.
As of today, I have relocated to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s a new home (for me, at least), and a new adventure. But I’d be lying to say that I won’t miss Shanghai, my home of 12 years. In fact, let me just come out and write it: I’ll miss Shanghai, my home of 12…
Junkyard Planet, in translation. Vice. Reviews.
It’s been more than two months since my last update, but that’s not to suggest that nothing is happening on Junkyard Planet. Where to start? Over the last couple of years, some of the best and most interesting journalism related to the global scrap industry has come out of Vice, and thus I was really…
It really is a Junkyard Planet, Everywhere Edition.
It’s been nearly a month since my last update from the Junkyard Planet world tour (of sorts). Since then, we’ve been in the UK, Malaysia, Singapore … and now we’re back in Shanghai. To my ever-persistent surprise, Junkyard Planet continues to have legs – and get press. My hope, from the moment I wrote a…
Scenes from a Junkyard Planet: Hunks of Scrap Day 2
During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, every weekday I’m posting a new photo taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. This week, at the strong suggestion of my wife, I’m running a series…
Scenes from a Junkyard Planet: Hunks of Scrap, Day 1
During the run-up to the November 12 release of my first book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, every weekday I’m posting a new photo taken during my decade of reporting on the global waste, recycling, refurbishment, and repair trade. Today’s image was suggested by wife who expressed concern that last week’s images…
Stop the Baseless Panicking Over E-Waste
What happens to your old phones, computers, televisions and other devices when you drop them into the recycling bin? For more than a decade, the standard answer to that question has been some variation of: they’re “dumped” in China. The examples are rife: from a Peabody-award winning story by Sixty Minutes, to beautifully laid-out, two-page…
Did Chinese iPhone 5 workers really go on strike? Probably not.
Late Friday, news broke on several wire services that Chinese workers had engaged in a massive strike at a Foxconn manufacturing plant in Zhengzhou, China. The source of the story was a press release issued by China Labor Watch, a New York-based labor right organization. Over the weekend I made the decision that I would…
Junkyard Planet
This just in: I’ve turned in the manuscript to my first book, Junkyard Planet, to Bloomsbury Press. It’s a first-person account of the globalizing waste and recycling industry, from the wilds of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to the grimy scrap boomtowns of south China. We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll visit the machine that recovers most of…
Offline until JULY 8
For the next month, give or take, I’ll be in a secure, undisclosed location finishing a book for Bloomsbury Press about the globalization of the recycling and waste trade. By design, I’ll have sporadic access to email, so if you contact me please understand if I don’t get back to you right away. But I will…