2023年经济学人 堆积如山的垃圾问题（在线收听）

    Culture

    文艺版块

    Book review

    书评

    Heaps of trouble

    堆积如山的问题

    Wasteland. By Oliver Franklin-Wallis.

    《垃圾场》，奥利弗·富兰克林-沃利斯著。

    In “our mutual friend”, Charles Dickens’s last complete novel, stray paper “hangs on every bush, flutters in every tree, is caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every enclosure”.

    《我们共同的朋友》是查尔斯·狄更斯最后一部完结小说，在这本书中，废纸“挂在每一簇灌木丛上，在每一棵树上飘扬，飞舞着被电线拦住，出没于每一个围场”。

    Since those words were published in the 1860s, the world’s waste problem has changed in both scale and composition.

    自从这些文字在19世纪60年代发表以来，全世界的垃圾问题在规模和结构上都发生了变化。

    These days plastic in one form or another is strewn on verges, clogs rivers and swirls around oceans in vast gyres.

    如今，各种各样的塑料散落在路边草地上，堵塞了河流，在海洋中形成巨大的漩涡。

    Circulated by winds and tides, tiny nanoplastics have penetrated all manner of watery ecosystems, reaching both the Earth’s poles and its highest peaks, with unknown consequences for the planet.

    在风和潮汐的作用下，微小的纳米塑料已经渗入了各种水体生态系统，到达了地球的两极和最高峰，给地球带来尚不可知的后果。

    Worried by the pollution caused by a throwaway culture, Oliver Franklin-Wallis—a British journalist who has written for The Economist—heads to places that best illustrate this profligacy.

    曾为《经济学人》撰稿的英国记者奥利弗·富兰克林-沃利斯对一次性文化造成的污染深感担忧，于是前往了最能体现这种挥霍浪费的地方。

    In “Wasteland” he visits an Indian landfill that is piled almost as high as the Qutub Minar, a well-known minaret in Delhi; Ghana’s largest second-hand clothes market, through which 15m garments are thought to pass every week; a former mining area in America that is blighted by dumped lead, zinc and cadmium; and a defunct nuclear-power plant in the north-west of England, which contrasts starkly with the natural beauty of the nearby Lake District.

    在《垃圾场》中，他去了印度的一个垃圾填埋场，这里的垃圾堆几乎和德里著名的宣礼塔库图卜塔一样高；在加纳最大的二手服装市场，据说每周有1500万件衣服在市场中被买卖；还有美国的一个矿区旧址，如今被倾倒的铅、锌和镉破坏；以及英格兰西北部的一座废弃核电站，与附近湖区的自然美景形成了鲜明的对比。

    He sees these places as evidence of human myopia about the Earth’s fragility and the finitude of its resources.

    富兰克林-沃利斯认为这些地方证明了人类对地球脆弱性和资源有限性的短视。

    Rubbish, the author notes, is often deposited “on the margins, and on the marginalised”.

    他在书中指出，垃圾通常被“放在边缘地带，以及被边缘化的地方”。

    He explains the concept of “toxic colonialism”, whereby trash is shipped by wealthier countries to poorer ones, and shows its detrimental effects up close.

    他解释了“有毒殖民主义”的概念，即较富裕的国家将垃圾运往较贫穷的国家，并近距离展示了其有害影响。

    But he also acknowledges that the waste trade can sometimes be beneficial to communities on the receiving end: what one person deems useless, another sees as a potential source of income.

    但他也承认，这种废品贸易有时会对接收方的社区有利：一个人认为无用的东西，却会被另一个人认为是潜在的收入来源。

    Throughout his tour of disfigured landscapes and industrial incinerators, Mr Franklin-Wallis decries the tactic of “planned obsolescence”: ie, the marketing of products that quickly need to be replaced.

    在参观被破坏的景观和工业焚烧炉的整个过程中，富兰克林-沃利斯谴责了“计划性淘汰”的策略：即营销那些需要迅速被更换的产品。

    A notorious early-20th-century example was the “light-bulb cartel”, who conspired to slash the lifespan of their filaments.

    20世纪初一个臭名昭著的例子是“灯泡卡特尔”，这些商家们合谋削减灯丝的使用寿命。

    These days items ranging from “fast fashion” to wireless earbuds are liable to be thrown away or forgotten in a drawer before long.

    如今，从“快时尚”到无线耳机等各种物品都可能很快就会被扔掉或遗忘在抽屉里。

    The book comes alive in its descriptions of people and places.

    这本书对人和各个地方的描写也栩栩如生。

    A paper-mill worker in southern England is “bald and aquiline, monkish, with the gentle stoop of an under-watered tulip”.

    英格兰南部的一位造纸厂工人“秃顶、有鹰钩鼻，很像一个和尚，总是微微弓着背，像缺水耷拉的郁金香”。

    The appearance of a zero-waste zealot in the north of England is “somewhere between affable climate activist and festival drug-dealer”.

    而英格兰北部的一位零废物狂热分子的相貌则“介于随和友善的气候活动家和节日里的毒品贩子之间”。

    The colours and buzz of a market day in Accra are sketched in short, lively sentences, as is the dusty decay of an abandoned town in Oklahoma.

    阿克拉赶集日的缤纷色彩和热闹喧嚣用简短、生动的句子就勾勒了出来，俄克拉荷马州的一座尘土飞扬、荒芜破败的废弃城镇也是如此被刻画。

    Happily, Mr Franklin-Wallis writes stylishly about ugly things: cranes at a site for burning garbage “move slowly, Damoclesian, their noise a deep rumble”; the flow of rubbish at a waste plant is “relentless, the choreography balletic”.

    令人庆幸的是，富兰克林-沃利斯用极具风格的语言描述了丑陋之物：垃圾焚烧场的起重机“缓慢地、如达摩克利斯之剑般移动，发出低沉的隆隆噪声”；废物处理厂里流动的垃圾“片刻不停，有着芭蕾舞式的动作编排”。

    “Wasteland” is heavy on facts, many of them interesting and sobering.

    《垃圾场》中有大量翔实的事实，其中许多既有趣又发人深省。

    Twenty thousand plastic bottles are sold around the world every second.

    全世界每秒售出两万个塑料瓶。

    The world produced 2bn tonnes of solid waste in 2016, a figure that will rise to 3.3bn tonnes by 2050.

    2016年，全球产生了20亿吨固体废物，到2050年，这一数字将升至33亿吨。

    But the piles of numbers can occasionally be a strain.

    但堆积如山的数字有时会给人带来压力。

    At such moments, readers may find themselves agreeing that waste is “not the most appealing subject” for a book, as the author himself admits near the beginning of his.

    这时，读者可能会发现自己同意这种观点，即对于一本书而言，垃圾“不是最吸引人的主题”，作者本人在本书开篇处也承认了这一点。

    Overall, however, he dispels that impression.

    然而，总体而言，他消除了这种印象。

    “Wasteland” does not offer novel solutions to the problem of waste.

    《垃圾场》并没有为垃圾问题提供新鲜的解决方案。

    Mr Franklin-Wallis wants you to buy less and recycle more, along with a crackdown on “greenwashing” (whereby companies make exaggerated claims about their environmental credentials).

    富兰克林-沃利斯希望你能少买东西，多回收利用，同时打击“绿色清洗”(企业夸大自己的环保资质)。

    But he succeeds in outlining the size of the challenge.

    但他成功地勾勒出了这一挑战的规模。

    His book should prompt serious discussion in boardrooms and parliaments.

    他的这本书理应引起董事会和议会的严肃讨论。