To celebrate Earth Day, I am sneaking in a book review on Monday rather than Thursday. The release of Julia Goldstein’s Material Value: More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products is being timed with Earth Day, so it’s only appropriate to review it on Earth Day.
I have a long-time interest in recycling dating from the first Earth Day in 1970. Back then I organized a clean-up of my high school’s grounds—and was threatened with expulsion if us “hippies” did anything untoward. Thus I was eager to read Goldstein’s book, Material Value. She is highly qualified, having earned a PhD in materials science and worked as an engineer before migrating to journalism. Despite her extensive intellectual prowess, I found Material Value easy to read and follow. The book is a goldmine of information. I kept interrupting my son’s TV watching to inform him of a new fact.
She also talks about how chemicals in some materials can affect humans. For instance, since the sixties, BPA (an industrial chemical) has been used to make some plastics and resins used in containers that store food and beverages, such as water bottles. Research has shown that BPA can seep into food or beverages from those containers. Exposure to BPA is a concern because of possible long-term health effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children.
Determining what is “green” and what isn’t is harder to figure out than one would think. An counter-intuitive example Goldstein gives is that plastic cartons to transport fruits and vegetables to grocery stores are actually “greener” than wood or cardboard.
I was also fascinated by Goldstein’s statistics on the costs of recycling the gold in cell phones versus mining virgin gold.
If you’re interested in saving our plant through greener living, this book is a good place to start your research and can guide you into further topics.
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Material Value: More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products is available through:
