Hey, I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Thanksgiving is two days away, and if you are planning on spending a bunch of time in the kitchen,

you are going to want to hear this episode. It's a conversation I had back in February,

but truly I think about it all the time. The conversation is about where all of those

spent cartons and jugs and or other trash goes. And as the person who likes to cook in my house,

I find myself, you know, on a daily basis, standing over the recycling bin, thinking, does this plastic

carton of sour cream really belong here? And where is it headed next? My next guest had those

same questions and went to great lengths to answer them, visiting five continents to chronicle

how our trash travels.

Along the way, he discovered a multi-billion dollar trash trade run by shady wastebrokers,

a whole global industry powered by slimy spoons and crinkled plastic bags and all the other stuff we throw away.

It is a putrid business that we're all a part of

and don't know that much about. Here to help us sort through this garbage story is Alexander Klapp,

journalist and author of the book, Waste Wars, The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash. His reporting has

appeared in The New York Times and the economist, and he's based in Athens, Greece.

Alex, welcome to Science Friday.

Flora, thank you so much for having me.

Why did you write this book? Did you have a turning point moment with trash?

Yeah, it's a good question, a fair question. I mean, most people don't decide to give up two years of their life to travel around the world and visit landfills and

ports and attempt to understand where some of the nastiest, smelliest material is going.

But I would say that the turning point was maybe six or seven years ago. I was on a bus in Romania,

and I remember looking outside the window and seeing stacks of plastic waste on the side of the road.

...