Hello, everyone. Good evening and welcome to politics and prose. My name is codel be introducing tonight guest speaker. Before we get started i have a few notes to cover. First it would be great if everyone could silence any cell phones and other Electronic Devices they may have on them we will be recording audio for two nights event and you can see our friends from cspan here are recording. Great. Love to have you. We will be doing a q a following the presentation so we ask any questions you may have, use the microphone provided so you can pick up the audio and the whole world would be able to see. I know, right, the future. One final thing of course with plenty of copies of trend that at the front register it like a purchase a copy after the event. Adam minter is a columnist from the Bloomberg Opinion has been covering the Global Recycling interest for over two tickets. His new book, secondhand travels in the new global garage sale is everything investigation of whats happened to all the items we cleaned out of our homes. Once theyre donated they might end up anywhere from Thrift Stores in the us to think he stops in tokyo, for the markets in Southeast Asia and use good businesses in ghana. He examines all facets of this multibillion dollars Global Industry including the marketing practices that cause us to keep loading up again after each purge of her household items. Please join me in giving him a warm welcome. [applause] thanks to everyone for being here. Theres a little bit of my professional history in the room including a personal commission my first article back in 2001 with scrap magazine so its quite a thrill to have him here at this reading. When you finish a book you get two questions typically. The first question is, a very unwelcome one which is whats the next book about . I still have an answer for that, not even close. The second question that you get which is more interesting because it makes me think is how long did it take you to write that book . There are several answers to that question. If i were to give just the physical set down and write that book answer, its four months. If it was a question of how long was it from the time i signed the contract to the publication it was about three and half years. If i really tell you the truth about this book and how long it took me, it dates back to the time i was a toddler wandering around my grandmothers house. My grandparents lived in st. Louis park minnesota inhouse the phone for almost 50 years. They finally moved out a bit about 2000 but if youre in think about that generation you know that house is going to be filled with stuff. Some of the best stuff and some of the not quite best stuff. But if you are a toddler wandering around him like that which i was, its all the best stuff and it was a real treasure hunt, a global treasure hunt. We may have been in the living room watching tv or in the kitchen having get up at any opportunity that he had to sneak out into the basement and run which do things to buy whatever was down there was the greatest tree. Treat. Member find in my grandfathers photographic equipment which is horrified by we realized i got into our member finding the dartboard with the pointed poi. All kinds of great stuff and as you get older you begin to appreciate more things. The furniture, the furniture was wonderful. The classes i broke on one occasion were wonderful. There were the 40yearold pickles that have been eaten. Those were wonderful. Its true, family lore. That house was wonderful but as you get older and you start page out of being a toddler in start looking at this from the point of view of whos going to get this stuff, its still fun but at a certain what we all know it becomes a little less fun to have a house like that. Its a particularly uncountable subject and a particularly kind of 21st 21st century sort of america dread but weve reached the point with our inquisitiveness that in no part of the mourning process for our relatives is not just morning the fact they are gone but theres also the morning of what to do with all of the stuff thats been left behind. And i remember when my grandmother indicated to me that she was turned to think of it, it was in the 1990s and she said we need to start having some garage sales. At this point you could barely get into the garage much less have sale in there. We know what this house looks like, yes . But we did and it was for three straight years, and they were great garage stairs with all the best stuff if they didnt do particularly well but maybe he did but i was remember when we finally packed up the garage it felt like theres more stuff after the sale and before it. I dont know, to this day im not quite sure how that happened but it was very much the case. The second year of the great epic grandmother garage sale, one of her sisters showed up and asked her, why are you doing this . Its a lot of trouble. Ill never forget the response she said and in retrospect its an important point for the book. She said to her sister, well, if i dont do it, my to make sensible and they will not get the foul the out of it. That of course is true. We all know that. Nobody values our stuff like we do. As i write in the book the hard facts are your stuff, you become the George Carlin term of your stuff is a a value really almot entirely to nobody but you. After my grandmother passed, a few years later we did have the great cleanup and i wasnt in charge of it. Her children were. There was an estate sale they came in and, of course, the value was and got out of it. At least the value that she had ascribed to it and this was a woman who spent time running a thrift store. She spent time in junkyards and scrap yards. Which is what i have spent time because that was the family business. She had a keen sense of what this stuff was worth but, of course, its not what its worth to you. Its what its worth to someone who buys it. At the time she passed away prefiling up house cleaned out, i started thinking maybe this would be an interesting subject for an essay in this particularly 21st century form of greeting but i was already underway with my first book which was about the Global Recycling industry. I decided this is something i would need to pass on. As things happened, a couple weeks after my book came out my but the past when this time it was my sisters turn in my turn to figure out what to do with my parents stuff. My mother had never acquired what my grandmother did. She lit in a very small apartment but we still had a painful choice to make up what to do with certain things such as her letters to people we didnt know. What do you do with the dishes . What do you do with that desktop computer thats old . It took us time, initially things went to a few relatives who wanted it, her favorite chair went to a brother i believe but it still took over the course of year to get rid of the stuff. I remember quite clearly driving her china which nobody wanted, who needs another set of china . I dont know about folks here but i know people who not only have their own wedding china but the parents wedding china and grandparents wedding china in the basement. None of it ever gets used because who uses fine china anymore . I remember very clearly with fine china in the backseat of the car isis are driving to a goodwill in hopkins minnesota and waiting in line its a drivethrough goodwill. I dont know if youve ever seen this but you can we have drivethrough mcdonalds and drivethrough goodwill because we have so much stuff. We were the next person light and members looking straight ahead and saying im supposed to write a book about this. I followed the recycling trade around the world. Im interested in what happens to thinks of the people dont want. Where does it go . I snapped a photo of the moment, im going to need this for the book. This is what you do. I posted it to twitter and i posted it to twitter again the other day on publication date. It started to occur to me theres a book there. I wasnt sure what the book would be about. I dont think its enough to do just about what happened but has too much stuff and does not how to get rid of it. Im interested how the stuff is globalized and i traveled enough to know there were markets all over the world for american stuff, stuff americans didnt want and i was thinking maybe i can follow some of the stuff around the world. A few months later i went on assignment for scrap magazine. Kent gave me this assignment and they sent me down to texas to Dell Computer which had a program for recycling computers. I was in austin, texas, and as part of the tour it took me to a goodwill. It was the Central Office of the goodwill i believe in Central Texas and have whats called an Outlet Center. What the Outlet Center is, its where all the stuff goes when it fails to sell in the stores. Thats a lot of stuff because on average an American Thrift store only onethird of the stuff that goes on the shelves cells. Its not enough for people to want. So the Outlet Center, theyve Outlet Centers all over the country. The Outlet Center take that step, puts it on cards, doesnt differentiate at all and they sell it by the pound. At the goodwill of Central Texas they put it on a card and these cards circle around the room i believe in a 15 minute cycle and once the cyclist then, that cart goes back into the warehouse and some of it is dumped come briefly sort, some will go to the landfill or the incinerator or whatever they use in texas, and of the stuff, especially the textiles more often than not be packed for export to export markets typically in west africa, east africa and also in india. And i watch is an interesting to see this cart circling but also interested see who the customers were, who was buying it. It was not anglo texans. It was folks come up from the border. Most of the clientele at the Outlet Center were mexican traders. As was explained to be at the time they were spent all day. Thats their job nine to five watching the Cards Holding the stuff, loading the truck and sending it down to the border. I thought thats interesting. It became my quest to figure out how i could dive into this, how i could not only find a goodwill that would let me spend time there, and thats the easy. Im not embarrassed to say goodwill is one of the most difficult organizations to penetrate out of ever tried to report on. I reported in china for a lot of years. I know i have at least one china colleague who can come how difficult it can be to penetrate organizations in china, but goodwill was on that level. My hope had been to go to Central Texas. They were not interested and i kept basically calling along the border because i want to go somewhere where they had this border trade. Southern arizona, tucson, there were not reluctant at all. This will be a 50th anniversary in 2019. If you cant please publish the book in 2019 so can be part of our celebration. Best friends ever. So we arranged, i went down there and spent about a month basically embedded within a goodwill in Southern Arizona. Within a goodwill what i mean is goodwill is up of, its a federation and International Headquarters is outside of d. C. Here but each of the federations in the various towns goodwill of Southern Arizona for example, has defined territory in Southern Arizona. Basic from tucson to south of the border. Theres a few dozen of these around the United States. They have 16 stores, and midsize goodwill. I said im going to come and i will never forget when i showed up they were ready for me i could tell they were skeptical if you really going to show up and spent this much time and a goodwill . Coming from malaysia which is once coming from. Why would you fly from malaysia to tucson to hang out in 16 Goodwill Stores . Because is going to write this book no matter what. Its an interesting place to spend time. More sophisticated, far more sophisticated than any traditional retailer you have ever spent time around. Theres a quote in the book, theres a cabin calming hamp, director of retail at the goodwill of Southern Arizona. Theres a kevin cunningham. He could imagine you are at walmart but instead of knowing what your inventory would be, you might get catalogs and what it will be every week, you dont know what is going to be. Youll get a new truck of inventory every day. You dont know what ended. You are responsible for sorting it, pricing it and selling it. And by the way, well do it again tomorrow. Thats the easy if youve ever worked in retail. Thats the level of sophistication that goes into one of these places. I was also interested in the crossborder trade. The interesting thing but tucson is 90 of their customers they told the are coming up from the border. Its all border trade. That has some pretty interesting consequences because if youre going to cut off that trade, what happens to all the secondhand stuff it tucson . Tucson throws off a lot of secondhand stuff. Its a military camp so people move in and out and its a Retirement Community so people are moving in and out. If theres nobody polling that stuff over the border, its not moving. Thats a pupil called him. Shoe guy. He would go to all the good wills every day and by their shoes. You take them back to mexico and he was very picky, theres a lot of shoes and goodwill. He said he should talk to him and i said yeah, how do i meet shoe guy . They said you sort of just have to hang out and wait and wait for shoe rack. About five minutes later, kathy comes running in said shoe guy is here i talked to them on a store, hes a very friendly guy. He asked me not to use his name in the book so i will continue to call him shoe guy. Very friendly guy. He is very surprised that anybody would be interested in this and especially a white journalist. He thought it was crazy. He says well, you want to see what i do in mexico x he said come down next saturday, cross the border and ill be waiting for you at 10 00 a. M. Okay. So i did. My wife and son came with me. I didnt even know his name at that time. I just had his whatsapp number. It wasnt shoe guy was in his actual name either. I would like to read just a little bit from the book. Give you a sense of what its like to hang out with shoe guy. And who he was. This is from that saturday. I subsequently spent more time with him but in some ways, the first visit is kind of a favorite. Im just going to review a little bit here. Back in his pickup, we had to the port of entry. In 2017, more than 3 million personal vehicles across the end shoe guy counted several hundred of those trips. Ill tell you why secondhand is big. In mexico, people make like 1000 pesos a day. Say you want a mattress. The mattress is 10000 pesos in mexico. You will end up spending three times that. At the border, agents waive us. Tucson, you get a mattress for free and use top mattresses . Bugs and all that, kind of disgusting. Mattresses are the biggest money. Mattresses, appliances. Shoe guy doesnt do big volume in any of them. He does shoes. Mostly used once. If you can find good deals, often using coupons, hell get those two. Hes considered a big buyer in tucson. Thats saying something. On the other side of the border, he has a network out of buyers. Some take as many as 100 pairs of shoes at a time. He said he pushed his phone at me, a star wars film, i bought it for 2. The xrays complete and the customs agents waive dozen. How did you get started parts he was a fruit and vegetable cellar. They had enough money for a television at home. He says his favorite shows with a 1950s american comedy. When he started spending time on the american side swap meet, that tv time paid off. Koreans. I spoke english and they hired me for 4 a day. You speak korean . A bit. He spent years hustling and perfecting his business skills and knowledge of the secondhand market. He and his family were always looking for a break. He loved cocaine and was in the shoe business. The korean two guys winning money and proceeded to blow it. My father didnt want them so he gave us all his shoes. That was the start. He pulled up the truck to the gate of the facility and opens his window and pushes it in. The gate opens and he drives up to a unit. Like the other 54000 or so locations, this one is largely devoted to the stuff from american homes. But it differs in one respect. Everybody who writes here, uses it to store the stuff they buy up north. Shoe guy loads the mini fridge and tv into the back of his truck along with the two bags of shoes and we drive back into mexico. Customer faces growing and thats a good thing. Competition is also growing in the smallscale secondhand traders are becoming more professional. 1991, swap meets were a joke. People thought they were colonies or something. Now everybody is doing it. Why . Big money. In 2000, there is a crackdown on the marquess of people jumped from secondhand to drugs. Sensitively to fascinating. 10000 at a time unused good. They went clean, its funny. What we do is not legal but its legal somehow. He turks a right turn into the largest swap meet. There isnt open gravel area in front of us. Its connected to other areas which was founded in 1990 with dirty dealers. Today, hundreds have spread over the area. Tennis balls, baseballs and baseball bats and a nativity scene, a dollhouse, stock of tires, several large endured turtles on a shelf, pots, pans, a leaf blower, baby walker and a box of action figures. I also found jesus. I laughed, hes not joking. He reaches behind moses and grabs the jesus action figure. I will leave it at that but thats a little sense of what shoe guy is all about. We spent time bouncing back and forth like that. He has an extraordinary business and he asked me not to talk about the money that he spends or makes but he does okay. Its certainly a living and hes able to do a lot for his family and i think thats really cool. When i started this book, one of the things i wanted to do was figure out where my mothers stuff was ending up. Its something i talked to him about and i feel like he shows me and goodwill shows me and to an extent, thats the story i outlined in secondhand. Wheres the stuff moving . It doesnt matter to us anymore but perhaps, it means something to somebody else. I will leave it