It starts with a day at the beach. A single white sock that somehow spoils everything. It’s enough to send writer and ornithologist Stanislaw Lubienski on a quest to understand what we throw away, where it goes and whether it will be our legacy. By analysing items he unearths on his trips into nature – a plastic bottle, a tube of Russian penis-enlargement cream, a cigarette butt, an empty aerosol can – tracing their origins and explaining the harm they can do, he shows how consumer society has developed out of control, to the point of environmental catastrophe. He also looks with a birdwatcher’s eye at how various animals have come to adapt to and even rely on our rubbish, and interrogates the cultural significance of waste and the origins of our throw-away lifestyles.