A widely acclaimed writer on science, the environment and mankind’s uneasy relationship with both, Elizabeth Royte does the dirty work to get at the heart of some of the more troubling issues facing an increasingly consumptive global society.
Royte shows readers and audiences how we can all make a difference by learning to recognize our oversized environmental footprint and then taking steps to shrink it — as individuals, community members and voters. As we continue to exploit and abuse the planet’s precious natural resources, Royte cautions that positive, regenerative change can only be possible if we honestly reassess our relationships with waste, water and our own daily routines.
Program Descriptions
Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs and the Battle over America’s Drinking Water
In Bottelmania, one of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 “Must Read” Nonfiction Books of 2008, Elizabeth Royte ventures to Fryeburg, Maine, to look deep into the source — of Poland Spring water. In this tiny town, and in others like it across the country, she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that have made bottled water a $60-billion-a-year phenomenon even as it threatens local control of a natural resource and litters the landscape with plastic waste.
Moving beyond the environmental consequences of making, filling, transporting and landfilling those billions of bottles, Royte examines the state of tap water today (you may be surprised), and the social impact of water-hungry multinationals sinking ever more pumps into tiny rural towns.
Ultimately, Bottlemania makes a case for protecting public water supplies, for improving our water infrastructure and-in a world of increasing drought and pollution-better allocating the precious drinkable water that remains.
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash
Out of sight, out of mind…
Into our trash cans go dead batteries, dirty diapers, bygone burritos, broken toys, tattered socks, eight-track cassettes, scratched CDs, banana peels … But where do these things go next? In a country that consumes and then casts off more and more, what actually happens to the things we throw away?
In Garbage Land, one of The New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 2005, acclaimed science writer Elizabeth Royte leads us on the wild adventure that begins once our trash hits the bottom of the can. Along the way, we meet an odor chemist who explains why trash smells so bad; garbage fairies and recycling gurus; neighbors of massive waste dumps; CEOs making fortunes by encouraging waste or encouraging recycling–often both at the same time; scientists trying to revive our most polluted places; fertilizer fanatics and adventurers who kayak among sewage; paper people, steel people, aluminum people, plastic people, and even a guy who swears by recycling human waste.
Royte takes us on a bizarre cultural tour through slime, stench, and heat-in other words, through the back end of our ever-more supersized lifestyles. By showing us what really happens to the things we’ve “disposed of,” Royte reminds us that our decisions about consumption and waste have a very real impact-and that unless we undertake radical change, the garbage we create will always be with us: in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we consume.
Bio
Elizabeth Royte’s writing on science and the environment has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and other national publications. A former Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow and recipient of Bard College’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service, Royte is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor for OnEarth, and a correspondent for Outside magazine. Her work is included in The Best American Science Writing 2004, and her first book, The Tapir’s Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2001.
