Will be introducing tonights guest speaker but before we get started first please silence any cell phones or any other Electronic Devices we will be recording audio cspan is here recording. We will be doing a q a following the presentation we have plenty of copies at the register if you like to purchase after the event. A columnist from the Bloomberg Opinion covering industry over two decades his new book secondhand is a revealing investigation of what has happened to those billions of items we clean out our home they could end up to a thrift store flea markets in Southeast Asia or in ghana to examine all facets of the multibilliondollar Global Industry including the marketing practices to load up after the purge of Household Items please give him a warm welcome. [applause] thanks to everyone for being here including the man who commissioned my first article so thats quite a thrill to have him here at this reading. When you finish a book you get to questions typically the first is very unwelcome which is the next book about. [laughter] i still dont have an answer for that. Not even close the second is more interesting because it makes me think how long did it take you to write that book . There are several answers to that question just the physical sit down is four months but at the time i signed the contract to the publication is about three and a half years but to tell the truth and how long it took me dates back to the time i was a toddler wandering around my grandmothers house my grandparents lived in a house they owned for almost 60 years they finally moved out around 2000 but you know that house will be filled with stuff some of the best in some of the not quite best but if you are wandering around like that its all the best and a global Treasure Hunt for any opportunity that i had to sneak down into the basement that was the greatest treat i remember finding the dartboard and all kinds of great stuff and as you get older you appreciate more things like the antique furniture and the glasses that i broke a 40 yearold pickle that had never been each of. [laughter] its family lore. [laughter] that house is wonderful but as you get older and start looking at this from the point of you who will get this its no fun but it becomes a little less fun to have a house like that its a particularly 21st century dread and we have reached the point with our inquisitiveness that a normal part of the mourning process for relatives isnt the fact that they are gone but what to do with all the stuff left behind i remember when my grandmother indicated to me she was starting to think of it in the 19 nineties and said we need to start having garage sales at this point you could barely get into the garage last much less have a sale but we did it for three straight years and they were great it was all the best stuff i always remember when we finally felt like there was more stuff after the sale then before. Im not sure how that happened but that was the case the second year of the great epic grandmother garage sale one of her sisters showed up and asked her why you doing this . Its all a lot of trouble she said to her sister if i dont do it might two sons will and they will get any value of it. Thats true nobody values our stuff like we do and as i write in the book with the hard facts your stuff is really only a value almost to nobody but you. So after my grandmother passed a few years later there was an estate sale and of course the value wasnt gotten out of it at least that she had ascribed to it and she spent time running the thrift store and in junkyards and scrap yards thats where i spent time but its not what its worth to somebody who buys it so then we finally got the house cleaned out i started to think maybe this is an interesting subject for an essay but i was all ready underway with my first book about the Global Recycling industry so i decided i would have to pass as things happened my mother passed away this time it was my sisters turn and my turn to figure out what to do with stuff. Now my mother never acquired what my grandmother did but we still had a painful choice to make of what to do such as her letters what do you do with that desktop computer. It took time her favorite chair went to a brother but it still took a year to get rid of the stuff and i remember quite clearly driving her china which nobody wanted. I dont know here but those who dont only have their own wedding china and their parents and then their grandparents in the basement and none of it is ever used. I remember very clearly this fine china in the backseat of the car we were driving to goodwill in minnesota to the drive through we have drivethrough goodwill because we have so much stuff i remember saying i am supposed to write a book about this im interested in what happens of where does it go so i snapped a photo and said i will need this for a book i posted to twitter and then actually did on publication day so it occurred to me there was a book there i wasnt sure what the book would be about i dont think its enough just how everybody has too much stuff and doesnt know how to get rid of it im very interested in how it is globalized i had traveled enough at that point there were markets all over the world that americans didnt want and may be i can go around the world so a few months later i went on assignment to four scranton magazine they sent me down to texas to Dell Computer which had a program for recycling computers so then they took me to goodwill it was the Central Office in Central Texas they have an Outlet Center. It is where all the stuff goes where it fails to sell in the stores because on average in American Thrift store one third of stuff that goes on the shelves sell its not enough. So theres Outlet Centers and good wills all over the country and then they sell it by the pound and dont differentiate at all in Central Texas they put on a cart these circle around the room and a 16 minute cycle once a cycle is done it goes back into the warehouse some deep briefly sorted some will go to the landfill or the incinerator and the other stuff textiles are packed for export markets typically in west and east africa and india. I watch this and its interesting to see the carts circulate to see who is buying it. It were those coming up from the border most of the clientele at the Outlet Center were mexican traders it was explained to me at the time they will spend all day there thats their nine to five job watch the carts to pull a load their trucks and send it to the border perk i thought that was interesting so is my task to figure out how i could not only that the goodwill to let me spend time there goodwill is one of the most difficult organizations to penetrate that ive ever had to report on and i reported in china for a lot of years i have one china colleague tells me how difficult it is in china but goodwill was at that level so my hope was to go to Central Texas along the border because i wanted to go somewhere with the border trade they said its our 50th anniversary we love you to do this and please publish the book in 2019 so as part of our celebration. [laughter] so i went down there and spent a month embedded within a goodwill meaning it is made up of the federation and headquarters is in dc but in Southern Arizona for example has defined territories there is a a few dozen of these around the United States so they have 16 stores and i will never forget one actually showed up they were skeptical is he really going to show up . Why would you fly from malaysia to tucson . So its an interesting place to spend time goodwill is far more sophisticated than any traditional retailer. There is a quote in the book Kevin Cunningham at the goodwill of Southern Arizona and one day he said to me imagine you are at walmart but instead of knowing your inventory every week you dont know you get a new truck of inventory every day you dont know whats in it you are responsible to sort it and sell it and then do it again tomorrow. Thats not easy if youve ever worked in retail and thats the level of sophistication so i was also interested in the crossborder trade 90 percent are coming from the border its all border trade because if youre going to cut off that trade the what happens to the secondhand stuff . In tucson there is a lot of secondhand stuff its a military town and its a retirement community. People move in and out if nobody pulls that over the border its not moving so i started reporting down there is before the Trump Administration nobody was really thinking in those terms but when i started to write the book i start to think about what will happen if nobody wants this where will it go . That it heads to the landfill i wanted to find a way to illustrate that so i started to hear about a person named shoe guy there is somebody who is a customer who goes to all the good wills every day to buy their shoes and takes them back to mexico he was very picky theres a lot of shoes flowing through goodwell only said you never know when hes coming or going you just have to hang out and wait for shoe guy. [laughter] i didnt have to wait long because five minutes later they came running and said shoe guy is here so on a saturday afternoon very friendly he asked me not to use his name in the box i will continue calling him shoe guy when i send him a copy i send it to shoe guy at his address very friendly and very private anybody would be interested especially a white journalist he said you want to see what i do in mexico . Come down next saturday across the border i will leave you at 10 00 a. M. So why did my wife came to me to tucson i said im going to meet shoe guy at that point i didnt even know his name so i didnt know what i would see but i would like to read just a little bit from the book to give you a sense of what its like hanging out with shoe guy and who he was. I subsequently spent more time with him on the first visit so i will just read a little bit we had to the entry in 2,173,000,000 personal vehicles crossed and shoe guy was several hundred of those trips one eye on the road and mexico people make 1000 pesos per day a mattress in mexico is 10000 but then you pay three times that score the truck that has an xray machine. Bedbugs and all of that is disgusting. I dont like it but i can make more money than anything else. Mattresses are the biggest money in order mattresses, appliances, close. But the shoe guy does shoes. Mostly used if he could find good deals with new ones with coupon so get those two. And then is considered a big buyer. Taking 100 pairs of shoes. Check it out 1983 for re monkey like ewok from return of the jedi was sold it to a guy for more in monterey. How did you get started . I was a fruit and vegetable sailor loan seller his was a 19 fifties American Comedy with the adventures of ozzie and harriet he was at the swap meets the tv time paid off i spoke english and they hired me for four dollars a day i said you speak korean with the knowledge of the secondhand market and then he loved cocaine in the shoe business. The compensation he offered his father his house my father didnt want his house so he gave us all his shoes that was a start. He pulls up the truck to the Storage Facility opens the window and punches the code the gate opens and drives up to a unit like the other locations this is largely devoted to overflow from American Homes but it differs that everybody rents or uses it to store the stuff that they buy. And that is a good thing and then the secondhand traders are becoming more professional. 1991 swap meets were a joke they thought we were like carnies. Now everybody does it. The sensitivity to contraband. With those use goods we went clean and what we do is not legal. Shoe guy into the confines the largest swap meet in parks on the open gravol patch with a corrugated steel siding connected to others. Shoe guy has an assortment of stuff as well as a plugin nativity scene Action Figures several large Ninja Turtles baby walker and an action figure. And i went yesterday and found jesus. [laughter] he reaches behind moses and reveals the jesus action figure. [laughter] just a little bit of a sense of what shoe guy is all about he has an extraordinary business and asked me not to talk about the money he spends or makes but he does okay. Its living and he can do a lot for his family and i think thats cool. And then to figure out where my mother stuff is ending up and i talk to him about that to a certain extent i feel that he showed me and goodwill showed me what happens when it doesnt matter to us anymore perhaps if we are lucky its goes to somebody else so i will leave it there and open the floor to questions and thank you for being here. [applause] going back to your earlier book we had a good discussion but the book emphasized how important the free market was to the scrap business and i get that because it seems to work a lot of times but in another way it doesnt work because it doesnt really address the environment or save the planet if it helps the shoe guys of the world make a living so what is the appropriate role for government to deal with that beyond putting out the blue bin bins . I dont want to argue but recycling does have an Important Role in the free market this stuff goes to the people who once it most and will make something from it. If you look at the lifecycle and Environmental Assessment is done on product lifespan. From the environmental standpoint every day you use it like Carbon Emissions associated with that product decline that stretches out and thats one of the beautiful thing about the secondhand market and shoe guy if he doesnt bring that i know hes not the only one it will have a shorter lifespan in the United States and that movement is really about the free market with supply and demand. If there is a demand from mexico he wouldnt supply about the role for government right now i would especially with the crossborder trade i would like to see government stay out of it because the free market will handle this much better than any government will. Ive already said an organization like goodwell that does extraordinary things it is about one third of the us revenues but they only handle 3 percent of the waste but they do a lot of good if it didnt exist as a nonprofit i think governments would want to invent it. They provide demand. Goodwill is incredible. It is basically an incubator for businesses if you go to any goodwill in the United States and spend an hour or two you will see the people who are making their living buying stuff to re list on ebay or a shipping container to take to west africa i didnt write about it in the book but japanese traders going to goodwill to buy up large volumes that they consider and then ship back to tokyo there is a huge history there of retail that sells that stuff. If they are not doing that kind of thing. Shoe guy i thought that was a chinese name from your earlier book. [laughter] do you have any funniest or most eyeopening experiences you would like to share . That puts me on the spot. A lot has to do with the clean out the first two chapters is not necessarily funny but i spent quite a bit of time in japan going to home cleanouts literally businesses in the United States and japan contracted to help families downsize relatives or if they have passed on to clean out and sell stuff left behind. I had one moment i described in the book place not too far from tokyo cleaning out the house her parents lived in and she lived in for quite a while she was walking me through to show what was left behind and there was a beautiful cabin and she opened the drawers inside were handmade kimonos her grandmother had made. She started to go through them and the workmanship was extraordinary. She started to tear up and she said a grandmother makes these and passes them onto a daughter and passes them onto a daughter and i dont have them one room for them and became very emotional so that experience over and over in japan and the United States and not long after the neighborhood very famous for its vintage shops there is a market there it is a komodo market that is used beautiful kimonos. And those that i saw that were carefully stored that was in japanese people buying this it was americans that is who valued it. There is a great irony if you went into the vintage shop they are very interesting because its the kind of stuff i would think to make it through the door the one i described in the book but a champion knit sweatshirt from the 1980s and it says champion knit sweatshirt 60 is not americans that are going to spend money it is the japanese and it was a great lesson in the free market for what it could create. This is one editor after another. [laughter] with those cheaply manufactured products so what will happen to this whole industry and their long life gets to be shorter when stuff goes to the door at goodwill very quickly within days if not hours it is sorted if you spend time with the sorters i recommend everybody do it because it will change you consume the rest of your life they will tell you the quality of the stuff is declining precipitously and it is specific brands. I wont tell you which what they were name checking brands two years ago now it comes to the doors it wont hold up the practical effect for goodwill is they cannot put that out on the rack it will not sell so now its a cost they have to dispose of it usually by landfill they will not send it overseas because the buyers people who buy use close overseas they dont want your garbage either. They are very smart buyers. And you can see they are more savvy than those in goodwill for what will work in the market so thats a very dangerous situation for the secondhand clothing industry because the cost is going up if they get the same amount of stuff on the shelves they have to be acquiring so much more. It is a threat to undermine that whole economy. So how did writing this book change your own habits . It impacted my wife and i profoundly i remember being in japan in the moment itself at a warehouse full of used books which is the secondlargest japanese secondhand Goods Company they have about 700 outlets right now it is enormous they have a mail Service People can mail to them and they will send them a check so what they do is they price the books in a triage three quarters sent off to the paper mill because nobody will buy them there is no market and especially in japan with so much disposable literature and comics they manufacture so many millions not even on the secondhand market thats all bound for the paper mill a small amount is priced and put on the shelves or sold by ecommerce and as an author that is not fun to see. [laughter] the irony to be there as an author to see all these books headed to the paper mill was not lost on me. [laughter] but also it made a profound impression so we both stopped buying new books at that point you can get anything you want on the secondhand market so it described had this led to my wife becoming a bookseller herself because what she decided to do when we saw all these books i showed her a picture its humid and its really tough in box one and books. She said i have to get rid of him is hard to give them away but when she started to place them on facebook it started moving the people said can you get me this title . Thats at the end of the book but for us we stopped buying a lot now we consume far less and certainly the Environmental Concerns come into it but when you start spending time around home cleanup to see the impact it makes on families it really does affect how you consume. Could you expand on ecommerce and recyclable with economies of scale did you look into that . I did. In short all of these apps are really exciting with the new app economy and the japanese app has been very successful let go. Offer up. They are exciting but its important to keep in mind the limits they are skimming off the top of the market the vintage and the good stuff. If you go to posh mark it is the clothing trading site and the most wanted brands is lulu lemon and patagonia had a very expensive and durable stuff the midmarket labels you could find at a mass retailer like target that isnt selling because it is not considered a durable quality and it is declining. So at the top end of the market its exciting but the real issue is what is left behind its the cake not the frosting i think its great but the overall market is not that impacted by it. This is so wonderful to hear i am from a family of women that three generations back we are all the same size so i have been wearing clothing before it was cool. So in your book did you discover that linguistic fear of the word vintage or secondhand or used and why it context they are used in . When i think japan vintage i think very cool so im wondering what you encounter about the words we use to describe. Thats really interesting the term vintage in relation to japan is fascinating because you go into these vintage shops and look at some of the stuff heavy metal tshirts from the 1980s with gaping holes in them and stuff that should not be sold at a garage sale going 150 and they are called vintage. But we ascribe these terms and that means something very different in very different circumstances. So use of the term secondhand is when the course of reporting a lot of people secondhand they treat it like a and archaic term. I like the term people want to say used stuff theres something a little more immediate about that but beyond that i did not encounter that much difference and how they are used. Looking at the marketing practices once we de clutter . There is a passage in the book where i took a lad at the expiration dates on Child Safety Seats for cars and thats interesting because somebody is trying to scare into you that if you continue to use your Child Safety Seat after year number six now your child is suddenly an imminent danger. I was very curious i saw a lot of secondhand car seats and i said there must be something to this to show us that secondhand expire the polymers break down there something wrong with the seatbelts. I spent a lot of time trying to find the data with car seat manufacturers only to responded and then they declined to comment. [laughter] or they gave me information that was completely irrelevant to the questions i was asking. I contacted target which has a Takeback Program to get them off the road with a expire i asked them where is the data and they started to change their website language and they did it three times i describe this in the book i have screenshots reporter screen grabs everything but i actually got them and it turns out maybe they do expire but there is no data so with Traffic Safety and the woman who runs the swedish the head of sustainability and a few years back she was writing in favor of secondhand car seats on the blog but we use things like this to sell more expiration dates are a great means to sell more. I cannot tell you precisely thats why they are doing this it could be a liability concern as well that is possible but in the meantime it is certainly the case this is a great way to encourage people to buy more car seats. Similar to the question of fashion and secondhand stuff what about toys and how have cheap plastic toys and products affected secondhand . Spending time at the goodwill warehouse you find a lot of toys come through if its broken dont give it to goodwill all your asking them to do is pay for the disposal of it but even toys that seem like they are in good shape are not in there is a recycling option for those plastic toys. I have a son and with legos you learn very quickly they dont last very long and they are a cost so whoever acquires them often very quickly whether thats me i pay the trash bill or whoever you donated to. So there is no sustainable option. In fact i am familiar from my recycling journalism the Company Receives a lot of toys what they can do is shred them and then put blockages on export of recycling actually it was a commodity but i dont think it is anymore. I know to do with my boots and coats i give them to homeless shelters and i have fancy stuff but what about tshirts or workout close that nobody else wants but they could be used do i give them to anything . If it is a decent quality government and you give it to a charity it will make its way into the recycling economy. We didnt talk about that today there is a massive rags industry and it dates back 100 years. One third of the used clothing in the United States is cut up into rags i visited one of these plans in ohio they are sold to hotels given to Housekeeping Services to oil and Gas Companies wiping up leaks, leaks, painters are a Huge Consumer because they have to wipe their brushes and that is what will happen with that stuff that is the end use single use but that is where a lot of that will go. We will be doing a signing here at the table. [applause] it is an uber book that really where we are right now with Technology Coverage and how we view the impacts on tech from the late nineties up until a few years ago tech coverage and reporting was largely with the young founders in cities like they were in their College Dorm Room and the pathology that you also can be the next billiondollar entrepreneur was a popular story to tell. I think that has changed your executives you could tell me i think that narrative has changed a lot now we start to see the dark side of how tech can operate whether uber people getting assaulted or murdered in their vehicles or manipulation with facebook and twitter and social networks. It is worth exploring the secondary fx that are not positive in tech joined by author of revolution Mister Romero before we get into this book what do you do for a living . I author . No actually this is my first book i am an actor and standup committee and thats what i have been doing for many years comedian