Book excerpt: Harold Crooks chronicles the history of waste management, showing how an ideology of privatization set the stage for the local refuse collection business to become a global corporate enterprise. The author tracks the emergence of the multinational firms that dominate the business and examines how governments fail to cope with the waste disposal needs of growing populations. He discusses the emergence of a citizens' counter-movement, communities standing up to the troubling consequences of contemporary waste disposal--huge incinerators spewing toxic metals into the atmosphere, dumps that leak toxins into the groundwater, and hazardous waste sites that must be monitored indefinitely. Giants of Garbage is a clear-eyed analysis of one of the largest and most persistent environmental issues facing Canadians today.