Giants of Garbage

Marc Portelance is a graduate business student and researcher at
Laurentian University.

This book focuses on a powerful industry that is still largely free of
economic regulations: namely, the global waste industry. In Part 1,
Crooks examines how local refuse collection became a global corporate
enterprise; the history of monopolization; and the emergence of a
municipal–industrial complex that turned to mass incineration as the
favored means of waste disposal. The countermovement toward a system of
for-profit corporate waste disposal is also introduced. Part 2 examines
the four most important waste-disposal corporations—and the efforts of
one industry insider to expose the predatory nature of the pricing and
marketing strategies developed by these companies. Part 3 comprises case
studies of the waste-disposal industry in three major Canadian cities.
Consideration is given to the politicization of waste issues, and to
popular responses to corporate domination of the waste trade.

This informative, insightful, and well-researched study should be read
by everyone who is concerned with social issues. Its value will
certainly not diminish with the passage of time.