Edward Humes Accepts Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability 

Edward Humes posed a striking question to the audience who packed the Orrery Pavilion in Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center: "What possessed me to write not one but two books with garbage in the title?" 

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Philadelphia native, Humes was visiting campus on October 15 to accept the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability for Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World (Avery, 2024). 

The book itself poses a more provocative question: What if climate change, plastic pollution, and the energy crisis are driven by a single enemy — waste — and it’s something we can fix? Humes answers that question through a series of compelling stories about people across the United States — and across the political spectrum — who have made reducing waste a collective priority.

During the book prize ceremony, he highlighted Crop Swap LA, a group focused on regenerative farming and water recycling that has grown from a small urban farm in Los Angeles to an international movement. He mentioned Peachtree City, Georgia, a place where electric golf carts outnumber cars, and most areas of the city are reachable through more than 100 miles of golf cart paths. Humes also described Morris, Minnesota, a tiny town that embraced composting, solar panels, and wind turbines to save money — and unintentionally became a sustainability model for rural communities across the country. 

Explaining his approach to climate reporting, Humes said, "The best stories are engines of empathy. It's journalism with a heart."  

The capacity to reach people and influence a broad audience aligns with the criteria for the Book Prize in Sustainability, which is now in its second year.  

Presented by the Lynn family, the book prize acknowledges outstanding contributions to global discourse on environmental sustainability, with a specific focus on books that have a substantial impact on public understanding. The prize echoes Penn's call to fuel initiatives that advance understanding and promise solutions to climate change; this year the prize presentation joined a robust slate of more than 50 events produced during Climate Week at Penn.

During the book prize ceremony, Alexa Pearce, Gershwind and Bennett Family Associate Vice Provost for Collections & Scholarly Communications, said that universities and their libraries are increasingly called to leverage resources and expertise to solve complex problems that bridge disciplines.  

"Sustainability, arguably more than any other issue, exemplifies that kind of work that touches every discipline," Pearce said. "Libraries also touch every discipline, and we are really honored to be a partner in this work and to be able to offer this book prize as a way to elevate some of the most promising contributions to sustainability in education, research, and practice."  

A panel of jurors initially chose a shortlist of four finalists for the prize, which, in addition to Total Garbage, included Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age by Akshat Rathi (Greystone Books); Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere by Rob Jackson (Simon & Schuster); and The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It by Genevieve Guenther (Oxford University Press). 

The jurors cited several reasons for selecting Total Garbage as the winner, including the balance it achieves between educating readers and providing actionable ideas and solutions.

"There's sometimes a tension between understanding climate and sustainability with a systemic versus an individual or more local perspective," Pearce said, and the jurors found that Total Garbage "incorporated both perspectives appropriately and in ways that didn't lead to a sense of overwhelm or powerlessness." 

Humes confirmed this approach, telling the audience that he wrote Total Garbage as an antidote to despair about climate change — and he hopes that antidote will be embraced broadly.  

"We are not hopeless, and we are not helpless," he said. "The choices we make really do matter." 

Learn more about the Penn Libraries Book Prize in Sustainability. Copies of the prize-winning book and all shortlisted books are available for Penn students, faculty, and staff to borrow through the Penn Libraries catalog.