Gina Rae Mitchell

Review: Material Value by Julia Goldstein is an incredible book about sustainability and recycling. The full title covers it all. Material Value: More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products

Title: Material Value: More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products

Author: Julia L.F. Goldstein

Genre: Green Business – Manufacturing Engineering

Synopsis from Amazon

Creative Solutions from Smart Businesses

Are you concerned about plastic waste and its effect on public health and the environment? You’re not alone.

Are you confused about recycling and composting and what to toss where? Join the club.

Read Material Value to learn about the challenges facing the manufacturing world and how to make choices that are less wasteful and less harmful to people and the environment.

Discover:

• How metals and plastics are made and what happens when they are recycled
• The challenges that manufacturers face when trying to make their facilities and products less toxic and less wasteful
• How manufacturers can extract the value of materials while doing less damage to human health and the environment
• How smart companies are embracing the triple bottom line—profit, people, planet—to make manufacturing safer and more efficient
• Why some big corporations painted as evildoers deserve a second look

Get the inside scoop from:

• A business owner recycling scrap from airplane manufacturing
• A former geologist running a chain of donut shops
• Two entrepreneurs committed to improving e-waste processing
• An executive promoting social and environmental responsibility at a major electronics company
• A chemist developing safer cleaning products

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Review: Material Value by Julia Goldstein

E-Book Details:

• File Size: 4318 KB
• Print Length: 242 pages
• Publisher: Bebo Press (April 22, 2019)
• Publication Date: April 22, 2019
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B07QDBT538
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Word Wise: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Screen Reader: Supported

Material Value: More Sustai...Shop on Amazon

Paperback Details:

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Bebo Press (April 8, 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 099959561X
• ISBN-13: 978-0999595619
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches

Material Value: More Sustai...Shop on Amazon

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Review: Material Value by Julia Goldstein

Material Value by Julia Goldstein is an excellent book that is so very relevant to our lives today. It covers the materials we use every day and how to become more conscious of their effects on our life. The author speaks in a language the average person can understand. The book layout is such that each chapter flows into the next keeping you interested yet never overwhelmed with information.

Material Value discusses what our options are and how we can make a difference as individuals. It is so much more than the typical Reduce, Re-use, Recycle cliches that we usually hear. Goldstein educates us so we can make a real difference.

I would recommend Material Value to readers of all ages hoping to live a more sustainable life.

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Comments are greatly appreciated. Please scroll to the bottom to find the comment section!

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An interview with Julia Goldstein, author of Material Value

Biography

How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing professionally since 2001, but even when I was an engineer in the 1990s, I was always the one writing articles for publication in trade magazines and reports for government contracts. I gravitated toward writing, and an engineer that enjoys writing and is good at it is unusual. I needed to take advantage of my mix of abilities and interests.
What inspired you to write in this genre? I’m such an analytical person that I feel compelled to write nonfiction. I’m at my best when discussing facts and ideas and I get a thrill out of learning new things and explaining them to readers. I do appreciate learning from great storytellers, whether fiction or nonfiction writers, to enhance my writing. Blogging has helped me become a better storyteller.

Do you need silence to write or can you work in any environment?

When I’m focused, I can tune out sounds around me. I can be working from a coffee shop and wishing the people next to me would quiet down their conversation, but then I concentrate on writing and look up an hour later to find they have left without me noticing. But if there’s music I dislike in the background, that bothers me.

If you could set up your perfect writing scenario, what would it involve?

In March of 2018, I visited Spain for a week and stayed in a lovely one-bedroom apartment in Seville for a couple of days. It would be wonderful to rent out that apartment for a month and concentrate on writing my next book. I would live like a local (I speak Spanish) and be free from other responsibilities.

Were you an avid reader growing up?

Definitely. I remember being so excited by this set of red easy reader books that I got to bring home when I finished kindergarten that I had to teach my 3-year-old sister to read. In elementary school, I loved the Little House on the Prairie series. I was thrilled when the local library opened a branch that was on my way home from junior high school. When I took American Literature in college, I enjoyed the assigned reading. It was a great break from engineering problem sets. I loved anything by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Is there anything you would like my readers to know about you or your book?

I’ve been fascinated by engineered materials ever since I took an introductory materials science course in college, but I didn’t always consider the environmental impact of all the amazing materials that engineers were inventing. In recent years, I’ve thought more about these issues and the responsibility of manufacturers to their employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate. The more I learned about companies
embracing the triple bottom line—profit, people, planet—the more I became convinced that I should write a book focused on the materials aspect of sustainability. I chose to emphasize metals and plastics because these engineered materials are so prevalent in society and new technologies on the horizon can produce them in safer, less wasteful ways.

Author’s contact info:

Website    Twitter     Medium

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