Another way to reduce waste in the United States is through the implementation of recycling initiatives. Such initiatives include landfill bans and mandatory recycling programs.

Much of the waste that is sent to landfills is waste that can be recycled. For example, in 2018 23.05% of the MSW generated by the United States was paper and paperboard waste. And over the past 58 years, the majority of MSW has been paper and paperboard waste, which can be recycled. Materials that can be recycled include paper, cardboard, glass bottles and jars, juice and milk cartons, plastic bottles, steel, and aluminum cans, as well as empty aerosols. Although some of the waste in the United States is recycled it is not enough in comparison to the amount of waste that is produced. Only about 23.6% of the total amount of waste produced in the United States is recycled since about 69 million tons out of 292 million tons.

A landfill ban, as defined by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, “starts as a written clause, generally found within municipal solid waste statutes that prohibit certain materials or items from being disposed of in a landfill and necessitating alternative disposal or recycling options”. State and local governments can determine which items can no longer be disposed of in such a way that they get sent to the landfills. For example, in North Carolina, they cannot knowingly dispose of aluminum cans and certain kinds of plastic containers.

Another way to promote recycling is through mandatory recycling programs. Mandatory recycling programs can fine citizens who dispose of a certain percentage of recyclable materials to landfill waste. For example, Seattle implemented a mandatory recycling ordinance that required businesses as well as households and apartments to dispose of recyclable material in the proper way. This means that businesses must recycle all paper, cardboard, and yard waste while households and apartments must recycle all paper cardboard, aluminum, glass, and plastic. For both businesses and apartments, if more than 10% of their garbage is found to be recyclable a tap will be left and after the third tag, they will be fined $50. But for households, a tag is left, and they are asked to sort out the recyclables themselves. This program seemed to work relatively well. No one got fined since very few people even got a second tag. Apartment tags went from 77 to 41 and business tags went from ten to two in only one month. The fine was able to incentivize people to dispose of recyclables properly, which was able to increase the recycling rates and decrease the waste that made it to the landfills in Seattle. This type of program could be applied to multiple cities to incentivize people to recycle more with minimal effort involved.

Recycling initiatives have many advantages but there are also a few tradeoffs. The benefits include an increase in the amount of recyclable waste that makes it to recycling centers and thereby decreases the amount of waste that makes it to landfills. An increase in recycling also is beneficial to the economy in that it creates more jobs as well as increased wages and tax revenues. The national Recycling Economic Information (REI) Study in 2016 found that recycling and reuse activities in the United States accounted for 681,000 jobs, $37.8 billion in wages, and $5.5 billion in tax revenues. This is equivalent to 1.17 jobs for every 1000 tons of recycled material and $65.23 in wages as well as $9.42 in tax revenue for every ton of recycled material59. So, for every increase in 1000 tons of recycled material 1.17 more jobs are created. Therefore, an increase in recycling benefits the economy.

My previous posts have been discussing the issue of waste that the United States faces. So this post will be dedicated to discussing one possible way of reducing waste in the United States, composting.

The Natural Resources Defense Council defines composting as, “the natural process of recycling organic matter, such as leaves and food scraps, into a valuable fertilizer that can enrich soil and plants”. Composting speeds up the decomposition process by creating a suitable environment for decomposing organisms to do their work. It allows for a faster decomposition process in comparison to the decomposition of food scraps in landfills. Community composting has many benefits including, reducing waste, reducing the emission of methane gas by diverting food from landfills, higher yields of agricultural crops, as well as many others. Composting one of the easiest ways to reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills. Over 50% of what is sent to the landfills is compostable and about 21% of trash that people throw out is food scraps. One example of a successful use of composting initiatives is Petco Park in California. Petco Park is a large baseball stadium, but its practices and results can also be implemented in smaller communities. They implemented a composting program in 2005 that would collect and compost as much food as they could. They set out separate bins for trash, recycling, and composting. The composting bins were for food that would have just been thrown away before this program. They were able to divert 164 tons of food from the landfill, which saved them over $75,000 since 2015. This example is able to show what people can accomplish when they work together. No one forced the fans to compost but they were able to collectively do it on their own. Another great example of the implementation of community composting can be seen in Pearl City High School in Hawaii. Pearl City High School only has about 1,000 students but the special education students created waste food collection stations in the cafeteria. Unconsumed food was separated from the non-food waste and composted. This program resulted in over 34,000 pounds of food being diverted from landfills, which meant the school had a 97.5% waste food diversion rate. These two examples show how simple it is to implement these programs in both small and large communities as long as community members are willing to collaborate. Even though the program implemented at Petco Park was a large program in comparison to smaller community-initiated programs, both help to divert trash from the landfills and that is the main point.

So by implementing composting programs food scraps are diverted from the landfill and can be used to improve contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils, which helps to aid reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts.

In my last post, I talked about where our trash is supposed to go but, that is not always where it ends up. Much of the waste that does not end up in the normal destinations end up in the ocean. The main culprit is plastic. Plastic is known to take about 450 years to decompose and even then it does not disintegrate. Plastic simply breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces known as microplastics. Over time microplastics along with larger pieces of plastic have begun to accumulate in the ocean. A good example of this accumulation can be seen in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Many people picture a huge island made of trash but in reality, it just looks like cloudy water. Although the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not an island there is an island in the Maldives that is completely man-made from trash. But, many of the garbage patches that exist look like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only one of many areas in the ocean that are highly concentrated with plastic.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, which is near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, which is in-between California and Hawaii. The entire garbage patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. A Gyre, as defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a “large system of rotating ocean currents”. The gyre causes marine debris to get captured in the currents, which move the marine debris to the center where it gets trapped. It gets trapped in the center because the center of the currents is relatively calm compared to the currents, which are in constant motion. Marine debris, as defined by National Geographic, “is litter that ends up in the ocean, seas, and other large bodies of water”.

There is more and more marine debris being found in the ocean every day. The only way to improve this problem is to first know the extent of it and secondly to come up with ways to reduce the amount of single-use plastics. One group of researchers have done just that. A group of research scientists from the University of Hawaii has teamed up with The Swim Expedition and The Ocean Voyages Institute to tag and track waste that they find in the Pacific Ocean. They are trying to track the debris back to its origin and track where the debris is going once it is in the ocean currents. They are doing this to improve models of how trash travels in the ocean and where cleanup efforts should be focused. More on what they are doing can be found in this video.

This post will be dedicated to describing how trash is disposed of and wherein goes in the United States. Most solid waste ends up in a landfill. A landfill, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “a system of trash and garbage disposal in which the waste is buried between layers of earth to build up low-lying land”. But how does it get to the landfill? The first stop it makes after getting picked up by the garbage truck is a transfer station. Here your trash is compacted and prepared for transfer to its final destination of a landfill, recycling center, incinerator, or anaerobic digester. Another option is for your trash to go to a material recovery facility (MRFs) to be sorted. The useful materials are separated from the waste before it reaches its final destination. There are two types of material recovery facilities, clean and dirty. A clean facility receives recyclables that have to be presorted. A dirty facility receives recyclable items mixed with trash, which have to be sorted out.

Now to differentiate between the final destinations: landfills, recycling centers, incinerators, and anaerobic digesters. The most popular final destination of waste landfills. The sole purpose of a landfill is to store waste. It does not break it down in any way but instead stores waste in layers separated by clay, soil, plants, and plastic until it eventually decomposes. The second most popular final destination is recycling centers. Although they are the second most popular, they are only about half of the percentage of waste in landfills (25.8%). The purpose of recycling centers is to reuse and repurpose by turning the waste into new products. Next is incinerators, which are designed to burn waste. As discussed in my last post burning waste is extremely harmful because of the toxins it releases. And finally, anaerobic digesters are a form of waste-to-energy conversion. It uses microorganisms to turn organic materials into energy and fertilizer. Although recycling, incineration, and anaerobic digestion helps reduce waste, they are not used as frequently as they should be. The graph below shows that as of 2015, 137,700,00 tons of waste were put into landfills while only 67,770,000 tons were recycled.

One issue that demonstrates the lack of recycling to reduce waste can be seen in my hometown of Dallas, TX. We have bulk trash that is picked up once a month. You can leave large items or brush. Some items placed on the curb may be recyclable but they are not sorted out and there is no way for citizens to sort it out beforehand. It all just goes to the same landfill. And the landfill bulk trash goes to is across the street from the recycling center. One would think the bulk trash would be able to be sorted so that a few items could make their way across the street to be recycled.

This first post will be dedicated to describing the environmental issue of waste management in the United States. The United State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses the term, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to refer to ” trash or garbage—consists of everyday items we use and then throw away, such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries”. Overall, the United States produces three times the global average of waste, this includes food waste as well as plastics. The amount of waste produced in the United States equates to 773kg per person. And the amount of waste that the United States is producing is growing exponentially. This graph shows that in 1960 the US produced 88.1 million tons of MSW and in 2018 they produced 292.4 million tons of MSW, which is 4.9 pounds per person per day.
The large amount of trash that is produced by the United States alone is not only a problem in and of itself but it also affects other issues, such as climate change, public health, and wildlife animals. The trash that makes up landfills produce methane gas, which is a greenhouse gas. The disposal of trash also produces carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas. When the trash is burned, it emits a dangerous level of carbon dioxide as well as horrid smells. About 40% of the world’s trash is disposed of in this fashion, which is why we must find a more sustainable way to dispose of MSW. And now that China is no longer accepting the United States’ trash, the United States has resulted to burning more of it. The emissions from landfill and the burning of trash creates air that has lead to people contracting diseases such as, asthma, cardiovascular disease, COPD, infectious diseases, and many more that can be found on EPA’s website. But our trash problem is not only affecting us, but it is also affecting marine life. In the past years many animals, including fish, turtles, whales, and other aquatic animals have been injured or died because of our waste. They have injected plastic or gotten stuck in plastic rings from soda cans.

As of 2018 plastics are the third leading source of MSW just after paper/paperboard and food. The main issue with plastic is that it takes about 450 years to fully decompose and so if it is not recycled it will just sit in a landfill. With plastic taking 450 years to decompose and Americans are producing 4.9 pounds of trash each day for each person, landfills are taking in more trash than is decomposing. This only leads to more and more plastic being found in the ocean. So, we must find a better way to dispose of not only plastic but all other forms of waste.