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On a typical day, you might drive to work, stop for a coffee or lunch, or just order dinner while you watch TV in an air-conditioned room. Every one of those resources comes in the form of natural resources withdrawn from the Earth and finally ends up in the trash. Our ecological footprint not only encompasses the resources that we use but also the land required to assimilate the wastes generated.
Humans generate more than 2.1 billion tons of MSW per year, enough to fill 822,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. However, during the study, the United States stood out from the 194 countries in some disturbing ways. While the US has just about 4% of the world’s population, it manufactures 12% of the world’s municipal solid waste (MSW), or in simple terms, “Garbage”. MSW is generated at more than 4 pounds per person per day in the United States, totaling 239 million tons per year. However, a question arises, isn’t it true that China and India produce more garbage than the US? Yes, they are responsible, in fact, for 27 percent of the world’s waste. However, those two nations have a total population of 2.7 billion, compared to the US’s 327 million. The math is appalling: Despite having more than eight times the population of the USA, both China and India just generate little more than half the amount of garbage that the United States does. According to the study, Americans manufacture more than three times as much waste as their Chinese counterparts.
Where does the Trash go after being picked up?
There are a few possibilities, but it is most likely to end up in landfills. Landfills are maintained and regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Landfills accept MSW and other materials for a fee, layer it in an excavated hole in the ground, cover it with soil, and leave the waste to decompose. From this process, a naturally occurring methane gas and toxic liquids called leachate can be extracted. Unfortunately, this process is inefficient. The uncaptured methane is a significant contributor to climate change. It is 34 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period. But, according to the EPA, in 2018, almost half of that trash went to landfills in the US. The US has never had a national recycling rate (recovered material + composting) higher than 35% since the 1960s.
Fortunately, there are many other alternative ways of disposal to gain some value out of waste, such as composting, combustion for energy recovery. According to EPA, Paper and Food are the most commonly found items in MSW System and they are disposed as shown in the Sankey Chart for the year 2018.
Poor waste management contributes to climate change and air pollution, and directly affects many ecosystems and species. Some ecosystems, like the marine and coastal ones, can be severely affected by poor management of waste, or by littering. Marine litter is a growing concern, and not only for aesthetic reasons: entanglement and ingestion constitute severe threats to many marine species. Moreover, waste management costs money. Creating an infrastructure for collecting, sorting and recycling is costly, but once in place, recycling can generate revenues and create jobs.
A good example is South Korea. Because of increasing incomes and improvements in consumption, the country's solid waste generation grew rapidly. The government instituted a scheme in 1995 that allowed citizens to pay for official garbage bags. The cost of disposal differed depending on the municipality. Although South Korea’s system did not charge people for the full cost, waste generation fell from 1.3kg per person per day in 1994 to 0.95 kg in 2014. The recycling rate rose from 15.4 percent to 59 percent over the same period. After adding composting program in 2013 to separate out food waste, landfill food waste saw a drop from 97 percent in 1994 to about 2 percent in 2014.
In the following sections, we will be focusing on Food and Plastic Wastes.
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