Rose George
Rose George
Rose George is a British journalist and author. She began writing in 1994, as an intern at The Nation magazine in New York. Later, she became senior editor and writer at COLORS magazine, the bilingual "global magazine about local cultures" published in eighty countries and based first in Rome, then Paris, then Venice. In 1999, she moved to London and began a freelance career, and has since written for the Independent on Sunday, Arena, the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Details...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionJournalist
chinese home human raw
Of all the peoples of the world, the Chinese are probably the most at home with their excrement. They know its value. For 4,000 years they have used raw human feces to fertilize fields.
communist decided essential great party policy took
In the Communist era, excrement took on political importance, because Party policy decided excrement was essential for the Great Agricultural Leap Forward.
beds filled generally half known people
Half of the hospital beds in sub-Saharan Africa are filled with people suffering from what are generally known as water-related diseases.
alarming apparently british chief common courtesy home mess painted port portrait rarity
'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me.
bin pour wipe
I think about what's going down my sink. So I won't pour oil down my sink. I won't - if I'm cleaning a pan, I'll wipe it and bin because I've seen - I've been down sewers.
calling contempt damage dementia loving pay required social state watched
My mother watched her loving husband look at her with blankness or contempt and sometimes hatred. And yet dementia is classed as a social condition, so that the state is not required to pay for long-term residential care. Calling it what it is - brain damage - is too expensive.
ditch huge pace sensation stunning
I find Suez astonishing for the first hour. It is a ditch in a desert, but a stunning one. The sensation of being hemmed in by huge ships, moving at a stately pace through a man-made waterway, is extraordinary.
grown imagination ships size
The more ships have grown in size and consequence, the more their place in our imagination has shrunk.
assume beans buy coffee conditions fetch govern men principles
Buy your fair-trade coffee beans by all means, but don't assume fair-trade principles govern the conditions of the men who fetch it to you. You would be mistaken.
cities serve works
Sewage works that serve big cities run into trouble when the cities grow up around them.
cause causes instead nurses retain vaccine
Rotavirus does not cause all diarrhea, but it causes a lot of it. Instead of a single vaccine dose, however, harried nurses may have to give several, as diarrhoea makes it difficult for a child to retain anything.
industry leisure map patch plane
We see the sea as this place of leisure and this place, you know, a blue patch on the map to fly over because we all go by plane these days, mostly. And we don't really see it as a place of industry anymore.
mostly oceans putting salty ten turns useful wasting
We are wasting our water mostly by putting waste into it. One cubic meter of wastewater can pollute ten cubic meters of water. Discharging wastewater into oceans turns freshwater into the less useful salty stuff, and desalination is expensive.
carrying gases hundred
There are more than one hundred thousand ships at sea carrying all the solids, liquids and gases that we need to live.