Garbage vs. Recycling

It's no secret our country has an overflowing, surmounting garbage problem. As I drive to and from work I pass what use to be the landfill on the outskirts of town, but now it is right in the center of the growing metroplex. Dump trucks drive in non-stop throughout the day and unload mounds and mounds of trash. The landfill has turned into a gradually rising mountain. When will they stop? What can this land ever be used for again? From time to time I see them spread out the trash on a spread of land and swarms of birds come to find their dinner. It's really quite incredible what we have created.

Until some new invention is created that can evaporate trash into thin air, most of us know that we MUST step up and do what we can now by recycling. It is the only way we can help reduce waste. In the next several blogs we will be touchingon specific ways to recycle, but for now here are some of the most recent statistics on garbage and recycling:

•Each person creates about 4.7 pounds of waste every single day
•In the US 33.4% of solid waste is either recycled or composted, 12.6% is burned in combustion facilities and 54% makes it's way into landfills
•In 2007 99% of lead acid batteries were recycled, 54% of paper and paperboard were recycled, 64% of yard trimmings are recycled and nearly 35% of metals were recycled
•The amount of recycling in 2007 saved the energy equivalent of 10.7 billion gallons of gasoline and prevented the release of carbon dioxide of approximately 35 million cars
•The number of landfills in the US are decreasing while their size is increasing. In 1998 there were 8,000 landfills but only 1,754 in 2007
•Each ton of mixed paper that is recycled can save the energy equivalent to 185 gallons of gasoline
•Approximately 8,660 curbside recycling programs exist in the United States
•There are about 3,510 community composting programs in the United States
•Disposal of waste to landfills has decreased from 89% in 1980 to 54% in 2007
•Recycling 1 ton of aluminum cans conserves the equivalent of 1,665 gallons of gasoline
•In 2007 the United States recycled and composted 85 million tons of the 254 million tons of municipal solid waste created