WASTE shares the author’s story of activism from a young age, culminating in her current work as an environmental justice champion with a focus on rural Alabama. 

Catherine Coleman Flowers is a truly remarkable woman with a lifetime of stories and then some. Born to community leaders and activists in Lowndes County, Alabama, Flowers took on the injustices around her, beginning with educational inequalities. Over time and through engagement in a variety of public actions, she built up her network and became an international voice for change on behalf of neglected rural communities. In the book, she talks about coordinating the study that exposed the existence of hookworm in Alabama. She uses her passion and connections (some seriously big names like Cory Booker, Rev. Barber, and Jane Fonda) to shed light on the devastating, persistent issue of wastewater injustice that she has now witnessed across the country. Many poor, rural homes do not have functioning septic systems and are prevented from installing them due to soil challenges and prohibitive cost. Flowers rightly calls this out as an environmental justice issue that entrenches poverty and will only worsen with climate change. 

While Flowers’s story was moving and her fight is exceptionally important, I have two criticisms of the book. Primarily, I think it was mis-marketed. The first half is dedicated to Mrs. Flowers’s background in activism and would be better named a memoir rather than an “exposure” as the subtitle suggests. In and of itself, the story of her life is worthy of telling! Second, I thought the writing was a bit lackluster and had a bit of an “and then and then and then” quality, verging on plodding. I would have enjoyed some variation and a bit more depth.