Books and Authors
Interview with Elizabeth Royte, Author of Garbage Land and Bottlemania
December 16th, 2008 by Patrick DominguezIn this interview, Elizabeth Royte (a freelance writer reporting on science and the environment) shares highlights from two of her books I really enjoyed - Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash and Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. I highly recommend these books to people who enjoy books such as “Fast Food Nation” or “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” that combine nuanced and thoughtful investigation into our lifestyles with wonderful storytelling.
Elizabeth Royte’s books show that great storytelling can engage people in wanting to know more about industries that you might not think are interesting - like garbage and bottled water, which are fascinating, by the way.
Everyone enjoys a great story. Are you using great storytelling in your business?
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- The adventures of tracking the truth about our trash - sneaking over fences & paddling away from police
- The “business model” of being an environmental journalist and writer
- How tansparent business practices often lead to healthier business practices for people and planet
- The social, environmental, and political implications of the bottled water that you buy
- The real issue with landfills, and where most waste actually comes from
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: This is Patrick from Green Business Innovators, and today I’m going to be talking with Elizabeth Royte about two terrific books that she’s written. One is about the business of bottled water and the other is about the business about garbage.
One thing I liked about the books is that they use what I would call investigative storytelling. Because they combine deep investigation into the environmental impacts of business and consumer behavior. And they also have captivating personal stories. I’ve seen great reviews of these books in the media, on sites such as the New York Times website, the LA Times, Salon, Treehugger and so forth. Fortunately the news media are giving attention to these books so that more people can get exposed to that fascinating information that these books have. I found both books to be inspirational and really a tremendous personal call to action in terms of my own life. Welcome Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH ROYTE: Thank you.
GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: Elizabeth, what was your motive for writing these kinds of books? There’s a lot of things you could be writing about. Why these topics?
ELIZABETH ROYTE: I think I write about the environment because I care deeply about the environment, and I’m interested in all kinds of science topics, learning about how the world works and I used to write a lot about conservation and people doing work with animals and plants and things.
Actually, my first book was about rain forest scientists, but my interests have sort of shifted with the garbage book to the human part of the equation and what people are doing to the environment. And the garbage book followed where garbage went, all kinds of all different types of garbage, after they left us. And research on that book led into the bottled water book because I started to see all these plastic bottles lying around and I saw them as disposable single use packaging and I wondered how we had gotten to this point. I’m now in this niche of writing about what we as consumers are doing to the world around us.