Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4
Garbage: Trash Talk
Nothing ever goes away.
—Barry Commoner, biologist
If there were an entry in the annual Guinness World Records topic for
milestones in garbage, the United States would certainly be represented.
Our production of municipal solid waste, known colloquially as trash
or garbage, increased from 2.7 pounds per person per day in 1960 to
3.7 in 1980 to 4.6 pounds per person per day in 2007 (table 4.1).
1
This
is twice the amount produced by other industrialized countries such as
Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, or Japan and 20 percent
more than Norway, Switzerland, or Denmark. We are the world's most
wasteful society. The fi gure of more than four-and-a-half pounds of
discards per day for each of us has remained fairly constant since 1990,
but total tonnage has continued to increase as the population has
increased.
The Stuff We Throw Out
The bulk of garbage consists of manufactured items that are essential to
the functioning of a modern society—paper, plastics, metals, and glass
(fi gure 4.1). Together they form 58 percent of our trash. Paper forms
nearly one-third of the stuff we throw out—computer paper, junk mail,
books, newspapers, magazines, telephone directories, and many other
types of printed matter. Decades ago we disposed of paper by burning
it in metal trash cans, but city ordinances today prohibit such fi res.
The percentage of plastics (containers and packaging) in our garbage
pails has increased steadily, from 7 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in
2007, and is now tied for second in abundance with yard trimmings
and food scraps. The excess plastic packaging of the things we buy,
