“It’s a smelly, dirty, public health nuisance.”
“It’s a valuable commodity to be traded.”
“It’s a fact of life that will never go away.”
All three of these disparate statements above can be made about garbage, and all three of them are true, especially the last statement. The definition of garbage — or “solid waste,” as it is referred to in the landfill business — changes depending on one’s perspective.
In the mid-20th century, dealing with solid waste was merely a cleanliness issue: You picked it up at the curb, you gathered it in a pile, and you buried it, burned it or dumped it into the ocean. Then, in the 1970s, environmental concerns began to be raised about air and water quality around town dumps.
Stricter regulations were set up to make sure landfills had multi-layered linings so that liquid waste couldn’t seep into the groundwater. Ocean dumping was banned nationwide. Instead of letting methane escape from the natural decomposition process, more regulations ensured that gas would be collected and odors would be controlled. Many communities shut down garbage incinerators to cut down on carbon dioxide and particulate emissions.
The greatest change, though, came about through the rise of recycling. Pulling valuable metal materials out of trash had been a centuries-old profession known as the “scrap business,” which reached its peak in the World War II years, when raw materials were scarce. But after the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, average Americans became far more aware of how much waste they were producing, leading to the first municipal curbside recycling programs that are so familiar today.
Here’s a quick look at how our relationship with solid waste has evolved over the years and some of the latest methods we’re developing to reduce, reuse and recycle our waste.
Solid Waste:
By the Numbers
Here are a few sobering national statistics from the U.S. EPA about what we recycle and how much we throw away:
28 billion: Number of bottles and jars thrown out every year.
251 million: Combined tonnage of solid waste produced annually.
570,000: Tons of compost created from food waste each year.
500: Minimum number of years Styrofoam cups and disposable diapers will last in modern landfills.
106: Pounds of food waste that are thrown out per person, per year.
95: Percentage of energy saved by recycling aluminum vs. mining it from bauxite ore.
34.5: Percentage of the American waste stream that is pulled out for recycling.
15: Years it takes for a tree to grow large enough to produce 700 grocery bags.
7: Gallons of oil used to make each of the estimated 800 million scrapped tires.
5: Percent of the waste stream produced by residential homes. The rest come from industry.
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
SNAPSHOT
THE STATE OF GARBAGE IN AMERICA
By Randy Woods
Photo: Wikimedia Commons