American Trash
Hopeful Optimism leaves Room for Improved Waste Management
Taking out the trash has become part of the American scene. Each week overflowing trash cans line the streets, awaiting pick up by huge, remarkably clean and odorless garbage trucks. These behemoths make quick work of what took residents a week to accumulate.
In 1960, the EPA reported 88.1 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and in 2007, more than 254 million tons were generated. We disposed of enough waste to equal 665 Empire State Buildings. And these figures do not include non-hazardous industrial, construction and demolition waste, or the sludge from water treatment plants. Daunting figures to be sure.
What Do People Stuff Into Those Trash Cans?
Can you choose which is the number one, biggest percent of solid waste discards?
a) Plastics
b) Paper and paperboard products
c) Compostable items such as lawn clippings
If you chose b: paper and paperboard products, you’d be correct. Weighing in at 32.7 percent of Municipal Solid Waste, the biggest discard in the United States are newspapers, magazines, cardboard boxes, copy paper, facial tissues, paper towels, etc. Some paper products such as wallboard and toilet tissue are not included in the calculations of MSW.
But those numbers may be a bit misleading. Although the largest percentage of solid waste, paper and paperboard also benefit from a healthy recycling system that reintroduces more than half of the paper waste back into production. Almost 78 percent of newspapers and 73.6 percent of corrugated boxes are recycled, rather than left to languish in one of the 1,754 landfills in the United States.
The second most plentiful waste, grass clippings, accounts for 12.8 percent of the MSW total. Other categories include:
Food scraps: 12.5 percent
Glass, metals, plastics, and wood each constituted between 5 and 12 percent of the total
Rubber, leather, and textiles combined made up 7.6 percent
Other miscellaneous wastes weighed in at 3 percent of the MSW generated in 2007.
Along with a high recovery of paper and paperboard products, consumers recycled lead-acid batteries at an impressive 99 percent. Major appliances (67.1 percent) demonstrate that companies actually recycle your old appliances that they cart off after installing new products. Steel packaging as in cans and barrels were recycled at a 64.6 percent with aluminum cans finding their way back into use at 48.6 percent. Approximately 35 percent of rubber tires were recovered. Many others were retreaded or shredded as an ingredient in a tire-derived fuel.
Efforts to recycle are paying off. In 1960 only 6.4 percent of Municipal Solid Waste was recovered through recycling. In 2007, recycling accounts for 24.9 percent, up from 24.1 percent in 2006. Now on trash day overflowing recycle bins sit beside the trash cans. Recycling, like taking out the trash, is part of the American life. Give yourselves a pat on the back, but then get to work. Recycling 25 percent of the MSW leaves room for much improvement.
Residential waste increases across the U.S.
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