Did you know that during the Cold War, 10% of East Germany’s GDP came from taking waste from West Germany? People couldn’t move across that border, but rubbish could – and it moved from the richer territory to the poorer one.

That’s a pattern that repeats itself again and again in Alexander Clapp’s eye-opening expose of the global waste industry. Trash from the EU is shipped across the world to be burned in East Asia. Obsolete electronics burn in Ghana, after they’ve been stripped for sa...