What We Leave Behind: A Birdwatcher's Dispatches from the Waste Catastrophe

Description:

Translated from the Polish by Zosia Krasodomska-Jones. 'Everything looked perfect. Sand - unique Baltic sand, the best in the world - and the calm sea. But wait. Something was amiss. Something was wrong'

It starts with a day at the beach. A single white sock that somehow spoils everything. It's enough to send writer and ornithologist Stanisław Łubieński on a quest to understand what we throw away, where it goes and whether it will be our legacy.

By analysing items he unearths on his trips into nature - a plastic bottle, a tube of Russian penis-enlargement cream, a cigarette butt, an empty aerosol can - tracing their origins and explaining the harm they can do, he shows how consumer society has developed out of control, to the point of environmental catastrophe.

He also looks with a birdwatcher's eye at how various animals have come to adapt to and even rely on our rubbish, and interrogates the cultural significance of waste and the origins of our throw-away lifestyles. Finally, he adds a personal touch by examining his own environmental neurosis and by going out with refuse crews to watch them work.

While Łubieński never hectors his readers, nor shames them, his clear-eyed, persuasive and humble polemic reminds us what we, as individuals, can and cannot do to address an apocalyptic issue while there's still something worth saving.