Trashed by Derf Backderf

A brilliant "ode to the crap job of all crap jobs". Trashed, both funny and informative, documents the technically fictional but actually derived mostly from real life experiences of JB the garbageman, a stand in for author Derf Backderf. JB is a twentysometyhing college dropout resorting to an hourly paid gig on the back of his Ohio village's municipal garbage truck. An unglamorous job at the best of times, JB documents every filthy trashcan, every flattened roadkill and every interaction with the village's more 'characterful' residents. We see to the ladsy, banterous exchanges of the Village's facilities offices and its employees- an odd bunch of assorted jocks, racists and high IQ-low functioning brain types.

It's an eye opening book, reminding the reader that what we throw away might be out of sight and out of mind, but it is still *going* somewhere. Every disposable nappy ever used still exists out in the world. Every toothbrush that every person has ever used is lying in landfill somewhere, or on the sea bed. There's a lot of interesting nuggets about the history of waste disposal, current and former landfill practices and the scale of our current rubbish habit.

It's quite a bitter-sweet book really- engrossing the reader in the day to day lives of the trash team and their small town lives. To see the changing of the seasons and the unchanging quantities of furniture, packaging and other broken bits of property left out for disposal. At the same time it's quite grim in how aware they are of what their futures look like, the bleak generation Y future of deserted high streets, $30,000 degrees with no employment prospects and the thriving small towns of their youth dumped at the curb piece by piece and hurled off to be hidden somewhere people aren't going to complain about the mess.

An unusual story of a small town barely ticking over, about coming down to reality with a bump after adolescence has dissipated to adulthood, about the lifestyle choices we make and the habits we form as a society. It's about our unsustainable habits and our uncertain future.