There is a school-trip atmosphere about this party of waste-disposal professionals off to the rubbish dump: the packets of sandwiches handed out beforehand; everyone piling onto the coach in the heat and waiting for hours, talking shop, talking rubbish. Mainly men, though there is a scattering of women. The occasion: an international symposium on waste disposal at Bosphorus University, Istanbul. This has got to be the Cinderella end of environmentalism, less cuddly than dolphins, lacking the apocalyptic quality of the hole in the ozone layer.

LRB 19 August 1993 | PDF Download