2 New & Noteworthy Sustainability Reads

The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines sustainability thusly: "Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations. Sustainability is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have, the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment."  Here are two brand spanking new titles (& some older readalikes) that each, in its own way, tackles the issue of sustainability:

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash by Edward Humes

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist takes readers on a surprising tour of the world of garbage. Trash is America's largest export. Individually, we make more than four pounds a day, sixty-four tons across a lifetime. We make so much of it that trash dominates America's place in the global economy--now the most prized product made in the United States. In 2010, China's number-one export to the U.S. was computer equipment. America's two biggest exports were paper waste and scrap metal. Somehow, a country that once built things for the rest of the world has transformed itself into China's trash compactor. In Garbology, Edward Humes reveals what this world of trash looks like, how we got here, and what some families, communities, and other countries are doing to find a way back from a world of waste. Highlights include: Los Angeles's sixty-story garbage mountain, so big and bizarrely prominent that it has spawned its own climate, habitat, and tour business. The waste trackers of MIT, whose "smart trash" has exposed the secret life and dirty death of what we throw away. China's garbage queen, Zhang Yin, who started collecting scrap paper in the 1990s and turned it into a multibillion-dollar business exporting American trash to make Chinese products to sell back to Americans. Artisan Bea Johnson, whose family has found that generating less waste has translated into more money, less debt, and more leisure time. As Wal-Mart aims for zero-waste strategies and household recycling has become second nature, interest in trash has clearly reached new heights. From the quirky to the astounding, Garbology weighs in with remarkable true tales from the front lines of the war on waste. "-- Provided by publisher.

Readalikes:

Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte

Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain's Chance Discovery Launched a Quest to Save the Oceans by Capt. Charles Moore with Cassandra Phillips

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) by Jonathan Bloom

Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe

""I am proud to call myself a straphanger," writes Taras Grescoe. The perception of public transportation in America is often unflattering--a squalid last resort for those with one too many drunk-driving charges, too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, a century of auto-centric culture and city planning has left most of the country with public transportation that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as the demand for petroleum is fast outpacing the world's supply, a revolution in transportation is under way. Grescoe explores the ascendance of the straphangers--the growing number of people who rely on public transportation to go about the business of their daily lives. On a journey that takes him around the world--from New York to Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogota, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia--Grescoe profiles public transportation here and abroad, highlighting the people and ideas that may help undo the damage that car-centric planning has done to our cities and ient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation--and better city living--for all"-- Provided by publisher.

Readalikes:

Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities by Jeff Mapes

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt