11 Things You Might Not Wanna Know (But Should Know Anyway) About Trash and Landfills
Taken from planetgreen.com
1. The average human tosses out 1500 pounds of garbage each year. That number drops to only 375 pounds of trash to the curb annually if you compost. Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that could've been composted (hint, hint).
2. No one produces more trash than the U.S. (insert reality TV joke here) where 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
3. In New York City alone, 25,000 tons of municipal solid waste is generated per day.
4. Annually, America's landfills become home to 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and lots and lots of diapers.
5. The average baby uses 6000 diapers before potty training. 49 million disposable diapers are used per day in the United States. It takes petroleum-based disposable diapers 200 to 500 years to decompose.
6. Decomposition times vary widely. For banana peels, it's 2-10 days. Cotton: 1-5 months. Cigarette butts: 1-10 years. Aluminum cans: 80-100 years. Glass bottles: 1,000,000 years.
7. If you travel Hamilton County, Ohio, you might encounter its highest point "Mount Rumpke," towering 1045 ft. above sea level. But Mount Rumpke is not a mountain mountain, it's a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill and one of the country's largest landfills.
8. Landfills release gases—primarily carbon dioxide and methane—but this "landfill gas" has potential as a source of alternative energy.
9. The Fresh Kills landfill on New York's Staten Island was visible from space. No wonder the extraterrestrials haven't landed yet.
10. Fresh Kills has been closed since 2001 and is now being transformed into a public park. Suggestion: if the swings are glowing, choose another activity.
11. There are 1,794 landfills in the U.S. and the EPA estimates they will all be full in 20 years.
Read the full article at http://planetgreen.discovery.com/travel-outdoors/trash-landfill.htm...
1. The average human tosses out 1500 pounds of garbage each year. That number drops to only 375 pounds of trash to the curb annually if you compost. Every year, each American throws out about 1,200 pounds of organic garbage that could've been composted (hint, hint).
2. No one produces more trash than the U.S. (insert reality TV joke here) where 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
3. In New York City alone, 25,000 tons of municipal solid waste is generated per day.
4. Annually, America's landfills become home to 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and lots and lots of diapers.
5. The average baby uses 6000 diapers before potty training. 49 million disposable diapers are used per day in the United States. It takes petroleum-based disposable diapers 200 to 500 years to decompose.
6. Decomposition times vary widely. For banana peels, it's 2-10 days. Cotton: 1-5 months. Cigarette butts: 1-10 years. Aluminum cans: 80-100 years. Glass bottles: 1,000,000 years.
7. If you travel Hamilton County, Ohio, you might encounter its highest point "Mount Rumpke," towering 1045 ft. above sea level. But Mount Rumpke is not a mountain mountain, it's a mountain of trash at the Rumpke sanitary landfill and one of the country's largest landfills.
8. Landfills release gases—primarily carbon dioxide and methane—but this "landfill gas" has potential as a source of alternative energy.
9. The Fresh Kills landfill on New York's Staten Island was visible from space. No wonder the extraterrestrials haven't landed yet.
10. Fresh Kills has been closed since 2001 and is now being transformed into a public park. Suggestion: if the swings are glowing, choose another activity.
11. There are 1,794 landfills in the U.S. and the EPA estimates they will all be full in 20 years.
Read the full article at http://planetgreen.discovery.com/travel-outdoors/trash-landfill.htm...
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