We the Consumer… Trash and Our Green Future
My last article(s) dealt with batteries and their importance as a step towards a greener future. I ended the article with this paragraph: We the Consumer… And as the simple consumer of at the end of all this battery production and technological advancements… What can we do? We can recycle. We can promote recycling locally. We can insist on buying recycled materials, not just recycled battery and technology parts, but recycled glass, metals, fabrics, wood products. A Green Future is not just in energy production, but in better waste management as well. “After a century of heavy industrial activity, we also have a wealth of human waste products full of reclaimable elements: wastewater, discarded consumer electronics and even pollution in the atmosphere. Technologies that scientists are developing to clean up these wastes can literally turn trash into treasure. “If you’re going to remove it, why not recover it?”” The Question of Trash Management The question for this article deals with just how much trash we put out and are we making the most of waste management, specifically sorting and recycling… Because if there is a finite amount of metals to be mined for our batteries, it would be a safe guess that there is a finite amount of land space for our trash. How Much Trash? The amount of trash, or municipal solid waste, generated here in the United States in 2018, per person, was 2.58 kg/day… That’s 5.7 lbs/day for those of us not comfortable with metric. That would be the equivalent of throwing away your mother’s Yorkie each day. Or 3 gallons of milk. Or a 24” TV. Just trying to put this into perspective. Even if we go with the EPA 2018 number of 4.9 lbs per person, that still adds up 35 lbs per week, or 149 lbs of trash per month FROM ONE PERSON. If you live with someone, double that. If your live in a family of four, quadruple that. Now let’s make this a visual representation… Imagine, if you would, that the trash you generate in a month is an “adult”, or better yet, an adult sized mannequin. We’ll round this up to 150 lbs. Now imagine that you lived outside of town and had no trash service. You have a busy life, and you let your mannequins pile up. That would be 12 mannequins piled up against your house, or wherever you put your trash, in just a year’s time. That is 1800 lbs of trash. Almost one ton. Now add a family of four; that’s 7200 lbs. And this is just ONE family. I won’t extend this out, but I hope I am getting my point across. According to the EPA, in 2018 the United States generated 292.4 million tons of municipal solid waste – trash. Where exactly does all that trash go? Where Does Our Trash Go? Over half of our trash goes to landfills. Land. Land that cannot be farmed. Land that is not in it’s natural state with the local flora and fauna, so it cannot be enjoyed by “getting outdoors” in a natural setting. Land that cannot have homes on it. Land. “Landfills are designed to store waste, but not to break it down. They are made up of layers lined with clay and covered in a flexible plastic skin. Drains and pipes crisscross each layer to collect the contaminated fluid created by garbage. As a layer fills, it is covered with another sheet of plastic and [finally] topped with soil and plants. Eventually, garbage will decompose in a landfill, but the process is slow in this oxygen-free environment.” So, landfills take up land space and are not “quick” in the decomposition of trash. When a landfill is “closed” and covered for the last time, the area is given time to stabilize and settle. “Upon stabilization, some landfill sites are used as parks, playgrounds, golf courses, or other facilities. Both John F. Kennedy and La Guardia Airports were built on landfills.” Please note the use of the word “some” landfills, not all. For any interested, the rules governing the environmentally safe maintenance, placement and closing of a landfill can be found here. Therefore landfills are not the best method of waste management due to slow rate of waste decomposition, land use and potential for environmental pollution from waste within the landfill. Recycle and Reuse What else do we do with our trash? “Roughly 35% of all solid waste goes to either a recycling or composting facility. The goal of both recycling and composting is to reuse waste by turning it into new products. Recycling facilities generally focus on processing aluminum, plastics, paper and glass, while composters use food and agricultural waste to create compost for municipal and consumer use.” Recycling While Traveling… From my own personal experience, there seems to be quite a bit of variance on recycling from state to state. I’ve recently been able to do a little traveling and in the last year or two, I have been across our great country. One thing stood out in my travels. Recycling, or the lack thereof. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest, recycling is big. You pay a recycle fee on bottles and cans to ensure that if you don’t recycle it, someone else will. I’m sure, if you look, you’ve seen those fees listed on your favorite drink and what states charge them. Where I was at, they even set up a neat system; where instead of a monetary exchange for your bag of recyclables, you were given a card/ID number that you could then use as cash at any participating store. Kind of easy. What I found as I traveled through the Midwest was that there was little to no recycling. My trash was dumped in a single can, no separation. Now some areas do have recycling, but even that seemed rather simplified consisting of a two can system with trash and recyclables. In the Pacific Northwest, I lived in an HOA where
