每天,我们在垃圾填埋场、海洋和我们的身体中制造了过量的废物。这是我们的废物的故事。
我们每天制造大量的废物,这是不可否认的事实。This is especially true if you live in the United States– we would needFOUR planetsif everyone on the planet consumed the same amount of resources as Americans. We live in a society that puts a lot of value in consumerism and immediacy– we want WHAT we want, WHENEVER we want it. This insistence on having everything accessible, cheap, and NOW has put a lot of pressure on our natural systems and creates an excessive amount of waste.
How much waste? In the US, residents create about 4.4 pounds oftrashper person per day. Our physical trash is made of paper, plastic, food and metals. When it gets tossed into the trash bin, where does it go? As you might imagine, there is no magical ‘away’ and our trash eventually comes back to haunt us.Landfills leak toxinsinto groundwater, rubbish builds up in the middle of the ocean, andplastics leech chemicals back into the environment.
How Do We Deal With Our Garbage?
As we wrote about in in thispost about how our trash affects the whole planet, our trash never disappears.
Most municipalities have few ways to deal with trash, and often it’s a landfill on the outskirts of town. All modern landfills have linings to deal with rainwater collection and leeching, but older landfills may not have a liner, or the liner may be cracked, which means that all the chemicals, hazardous waste, mercury, and other toxins leak through the liner and into the ground. Landfills also向空气中泄漏毒素, most notably methane, a greenhouse gas muchmore potentthan carbon dioxide.
Some municipalities burn their trash for energy. This is the common practice on Oahu, an island in the American state of Hawaii. The city’swaste management officehas a contract with the electric utility to provide a set amount of waste to the incinerator to keep the trash burning to fuel the electricity needs of the island. Though this process is controlled by scrubbers and other high-tech ways to keep the gases and fumes out of the air at the incinerator, other places burn their trash regularly without such regulations, leading to release of carbon dioxide and a toxic stew of chemicals from charred plastics and electronics. And though the EPA has created laws toregulate incinerators在美国,新的设施仍然可以向空气中释放化学物质。At a proposed incinerator inBaltimore, rulings allow 240 pounds ofmercuryand 1,000 pounds ofleadannually. Both mercury and lead are potentneurotoxinsthat bioaccumulate in the body over time.
What About Recycling?
Recycling is an option in most municipalities, and it does have the potential to divert a significant amount of trash from landfills. But after big pushes in the 1990s,recycling effortshave not gained much traction in recent years, with the exception of larger, super progressive cities likeSan FranciscoandVancouver, Canada. Both of these cities recycle almost all trash items and food waste in city-wide programs.
But we’re kinda failing at this. Plastics production is INCREASING, but recycling efforts are not. According toWorldwatch Institute:
“For more than 50 years, global production of plastic has continued to rise. Some 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012. Recovery and recycling, however, remain insufficient, and millions of tons of plastics end up in landfills and oceans each year.”
Why do recycling efforts fall short for most cities? Most cities that offer recycling do so for aluminum, paper, glass, various numbers of plastics, newspaper, magazines and more, but each city’s different in what they will accept into recycling programs, and often it’s very confusing for residents. In the UK a report said that residents feel ‘green fatigue‘– a surge of indifference or disinterest in learning more about green initiatives. Some residents don’t care to read the recycling numbers of plastic on their item and just find it easier to toss it into the trash.
Researchfrom 2012 shows that Sweden, Austria and Germany lead worldwide recycling efforts; in North America,San FranciscoandVancouverare considered the greenest cities. More recentresearch在回收方面,华盛顿获得了最高的荣誉,但即使在最高的排名中,它仍然只回收了约49%的垃圾;by contrast, the national average is only 34.5%, with parts ofLong Island近年来,这一比例仅为20%。TheEPA graphbelow shows that waste rates are increasing rapidly, while recycling efforts are not keeping pace. But it’s not really clear that recycling is the best option for the environment after all. But it’s arguable whether or not recycling is really the solution.
However, it’s important to look at reuse options for trash with potentially toxic components like batteries and electronics, which can be recycled at participating retail locations. You canrecycle Brita filters, and can donate your clothes and eyeglasses, giving them new life. But recycling is not going to save us.
What Makes Our Garbage So Trashy?
What does our trash really look like, and what are the solutions to reduce it? This chart from the EPA (data from 2012) shows what constitutes our trash and shows us some great room for making change:
This chart explains many things quickly: which items create the bulk of our trash, but also huge opportunities for us to change our habits.
Yard waste and food waste are easy starting points for waste diversion. Our food supply chain leaves farmers with excess, unsaleable product which rots in the fields, and grocery stores have overstocked displays and requirement for perfect produce (meaning a perfectly edible but imperfect looking tomato may simply get chucked), leading to an excess of waste before it even reaches our homes. And once it gets there, we throw away 30-50%of our total food purchases.食物垃圾和庭院垃圾是这些垃圾中最容易转移的,而且对个人或城市层面来说,这需要最少的努力。Food waste efforts can include:
- Backyard composting:If you have even a small bit of yard space, you can create a compost pile to reduce your overall waste output AND create beneficial amendments to your soil. Composting has a dirty reputaion, but there are a bunch of gadgets and tools to help make it easier than ever. If you’re an apartment dweller, there are options for small spaces like worm bins and bokashi buckets.
- Animal feed:Some cities have feed programs that take food waste and give it to pig farms. While industrial animal agriculture is a large waste problem of its own, small animal farms may benefit from the free food supply for their animals.
- Industrial composting:Some municipalities have industrial composting facilities that can handle large items like Christmas trees, park waste and biocompostable products, which need specific conditions to actually break down.
- Food donations在我们的系统中,大部分的食物浪费实际上是在供应链层面。The NRDC estimated that just15% of all wasted foodwould be enough to feed more than 25 million Americans every year through food bank and other donation programs.
Paper and paperboardare the next big contributor, another product that is easily reduce-able. But relying on recycling is not the best option for paper, as often chemicals are used the the process and can create its own negative environmental impact. According to theForbes, for “newspaper, dimensional lumber, and medium-density fiberboard–the net greenhouse gas emissions reductions enabled by recycling are actually greater than they would be if the waste source was simply reduced.” Andpaper is not infinitely recyclable正如人们常想的那样。高质量的纸张回收时可以提供一些好处,但其他低质量的纸张最好不要回收。
But it’s arguable thatplasticsare the biggest problem here. The best way to avoid getting plastics in our waste supply is to avoid them as much as possible as a consumer. As much as possible, choose non-plastic options. This includes simple things like bringing your lunch,carrying a reusable bag, and sipping from a stainless steel or glass water bottle. But plastic is EVERYWHERE in our everyday life, and it’s not good for us.
Despite claims of safety from the chemical companies about the safety of petrochemical-based plastics, very few of the the ingredients in plastic have ever been tested. Not only does plastic build up in our landfills at 12% of our waste, it’s also way more dangerous than paper or food waste. The American Chemistry Council, the mouthpiece for chemical and plastics manufacturing, has been caughtlying about chemicals, and was also caught funding a false ‘study’ showing thatreusable bags are dangerousfor consumers (to encourage us to use more plastic bags, of course).
How powerful is the ‘Big Plastic’ lobby group?Alternetsays,
“The industry that produces plastic, largely represented by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), has an annual budget of over $120 million to protect its interests. But as the plague of plastic that wreaks havoc on our environment slowly gains the attention of policymakers, concerned citizens and the media, the makers of plastic resins and the companies that package their products have become increasingly aggressive about defending their respective bottom lines.”
And worst of all is that plastics are not really that recyclable, which is why recycling is not really the best option. It’s a falsehood that plastics can berecycled indefinitely.In fact,most plastics can only be recycled once, and those plastics are usually downgraded into other items like fleece (thanks, Patagonia!) and plastic lumber, which are not recyclable at that stage. Plastics can be melted to be used as fuel, and areport from Colombia他说,熔化塑料作为燃料或燃烧塑料作为能源实际上是一种相对有效的能源,但这并没有忽视所有化学物质进入环境的问题。因此,我们不能依靠回收来减少对塑料的影响,我们必须从源头——也就是我们自己和我们的购物习惯——阻止它和所有其他垃圾。
Changing The Culture Of Consumerism
It might seem hard to live a waste-free or a waste-reduced life, but it’s definitely possible and is incredibly rewarding. Here’s our best tips for using less waste overall in our lifestyle
- Learn more about how our materials economy affects our planet: watchthe Story of Stuff, theStory of Bottled Water,and read our post here about howour trash is everywhere.
- Learn about thedangers of plastics and chemicals, and find out how to avoid them.
- Find resources for livingZero Waste.采取一些小措施,最终减少你对原始资源的需求,无论是衣服、塑料还是其他。自带餐具或筷子,带一个水瓶和咖啡杯,尽量带碗或盘子去野餐、烧烤和外卖餐厅,因为那里可能有塑料外卖容器。
- 看看你的城市垃圾选择。你们有全市范围内的食物或绿色垃圾堆肥吗?你能回收你的杂志和报纸吗?What happens to the aluminum in your city?
- What steps can take at home to reduce yourfood wasteoutput? If you have to pay by the pound for waste disposal, reducing your food waste with a composting plan can save you money (and give youcompostfor your garden too)
- Learn to shop withreusable bags, shop in thebulk bins,avoid processed(packaged) foods, andskip bottled watersand sodas as much as possible.
jottmansays
Jeff, Thanks so much for this piece. Would that EVERYONE learned this in school. Requirement for graduation! I feel so strongly about this, I started an online community and we’re all sharing ideas about what to do about the waste. And we’re now launching training to help us adults catch up with what we ‘missed’ in school. Any readers are welcomed to check us out athttp://www.wehatetowaste.com
All the best,
Jacquie Ottman
Jeff McIntire-Strasburgsays
And let me give a “thumbs up” to Jacquie’s community… very useful!