S&S bags Franklin-Wallis' investigation into global waste crisis in four-way auction

Simon & Schuster UK has acquired Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters, a narrative investigation into the global waste crisis and recycling industry by journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis. 

Publishing director for non-fiction, Holly Harris, acquired world English-language rights in a four-way auction from Chris Wellbelove at Aitken Alexander. Wasteland will be published in hardback on 22nd June 2023. North American rights were sold to Hachette at auction. 

The synopsis reads: “Wasteland poses an urgent question: when we throw things ‘away’, what does that actually mean? Where does it go, and who deals with it when it gets there? The reader is taken on an eye-opening journey through the global waste industry, from the mountainous landfills of New Delhi to Britain’s overflowing sewers, from mining ghost towns in the US to Ghana’s flooded second-hand markets. Along the way, we meet the people on the frontline: those determined to make a difference and those exploited by the crisis and its disastrous impact on the natural world. An unflinching look at a hidden industry that affects us all, Wasteland is a timely, human and fundamentally hopeful story.”

Commenting on the acquisition, Franklin-Wallis said: “We are being bombarded with news about the waste crisis: sewage in our rivers, plastics in our oceans, recycling shipped around the world and dumped on its poorest people. How did it get like this—and what will it take to fix it? Wasteland is my attempt to tell that story. It’s been a fascinating (if sometimes pungent) journey, and one that I’m grateful to have shared with my agent Chris Wellbelove and the wonderful team at Simon & Schuster. I hope that it will shock and surprise people, and bring some of these urgent issues to an even wider audience.”

Harris added: “Oli has taken a subject which requires urgent attention, one that been ignored for too long, and found a fascinating human story at its heart. We’re thrilled to be publishing this brilliant book.”

Franklin-Wallis’ writing has appeared in GQ, Wired, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Times Magazine, the Sunday Times Magazine and the Economist’s 1843 magazine. He is currently the features editor of British GQ.