Four pounds. That's how much trash the average American generates in just one day. Find out how your trash stacks up with Essential Skill #22 in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook:
Audit your garbage.
Author David de Rothschild suggests dumping one day's worth of trash -- recyclable items included -- onto a big tarp for sorting and weighing.
"Everything in your trash can has a carbon cost," he writes, "but the messy details are usually out of sight. You need to see it all together, in the plain light of day, to grasp your excess."
In fact, Americans generate 245.7 million tons of trash each year. What's worse is that we throw away 25% of our food, or 96 billion pounds a year!
But if "dumpster diving" into your trash can isn't for you, at the very least weigh a trash bag with one day's worth of garbage in it. Do the same with a trash bag filled with the same day's recycling. Estimate the weight of how much food went down the disposal.
Then add it all up.
Multiply the weight of one day's trash generation by 365, then add in an estimated weight of all that "special occasion" trash generation during the holidays. Then, multiply that number by 30 to take into account all the "trash behind the trash" created by the industries that your consumption supports, as they generate 7.6 billion tons of annual waste.
"Plan for the future by reviewing each item in your trash," writes de Rothschild. "Was it needed in the first place? Did you use it before you threw it out? Remember that recycled goods take less energy to finish into final products. Think about what you can do to improve your recycling and consumption rates, and to it!"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
There's always more trash during the holiday season, but we were still surprised at how much we produced in just one day -- 5 pounds of regular trash, 1 pound of recycle and an estimated 1 pound of scraps that went down the disposal.
Post a Comment