Americans throw away a lot of stuff. Most of it should not be thrown in to the trash. Nationally our landfills consist of

34.1% Paper
11.7% Plastic
7.6% Metal
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53.4% of trash should never go into the trash. These are items that anyone can recycle.

That is all stuff that could, and should, be recycled. Quite frankly, anyone could recycle these kinds of items.

12.9% of landfill content is yard trimmings.

Only people who have yards could contribute to that problem. Still 100% of that should be recycled. People who live in cities might need help with recycling yard trimmings; country dwellers have no excuse for sending away soil-building compostable matter.
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66.3% of landfill fill should never go there.

12.4% of what is dumped is food scraps. Trashing some portions of that is inevitable.

• Fat-containing food waste is a problem for composting (at home or in a public composting facility) leaving such fatty waste outside, whether for home composting or for pickup and delivery, is a problem because it can attract unwanted animals. That creates undesirable conditions which might be unsanitary or dangerous.
  
• Some part of that 12.4% of waste is caused by Americans' tendency to over-buy and cook too. That is a cultural issue that is an unfortunate result of prosperity. Some of prosperity's detrius has been addressed: we are wasting less energy by insulating houses, driving less, driving more fuel-efficient cars, and so on. We could make a dent in that 12.4% by being more food-smart.

With not much effort we, as a nation, could address several issues:

• Reduce the impact on landfills by 70%-75%. This is a ticking time-bomb. Many communities can no longer operate landfills because there is no room for those smelly, polluting places. Such communities have to pay large sums to haul away trash. For example, New York City's dumps have been full for a long time. Every day barges haul away The Big Apple's refuse. NYC's citizens have to pay for the freight and ultimate remote landfilling of those mountains of trash. As time goes on, those remote landfills will also use up all capacity; then it will get harder and more expensive to simply dump the 1/4 of actual trash and the 3/4 of non-trash.
  
• Save money, and not just in landfill costs. For example, there are 2 sources for aluminum: bauxite ore (imported) and recycled aluminum 'trash.' Aluminum from recycled materials cost 90% LESS than aluminum from ore (IMPORTED ore). Steel and copper are two more common examples of this phenomenon. The list is much longer that that.
  

Trash belongs on the basketball court (in the form of trash-talk), not in landfills.

Labels: garbage, landfill, metal, paper, plastic, recycle, rubbish, trash