To celebrate National Thrift Shop Day, Imagine Austin will take a peek behind the scenes of the thrift industry. Author and columnist Adam Minter will discuss his 20-year journey through the world’s junkyards and thrift shops. He’ll show how the globalization of America’s unwanted stuff goes from giant Chinese scrap yards to wool recycling in India. Along the way, he’ll share his images from the road, and provide insights into how thrift stores sort, sell, and recycle the things we donate, and how these donations change the lives of people around the world.

Minter is the author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale. He is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and regularly speaks on the global waste and recycling trade to universities, trade groups, TEDx, and the Royal Geographic Society.