{"id":18750,"date":"2015-07-01T14:01:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T18:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?page_id=18750"},"modified":"2015-07-01T14:01:31","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T18:01:31","slug":"the-story-of-our-waste","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/the-story-of-our-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Of Our Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"
We create a ton of waste everyday, there is no denying that fact. This is especially true if you live in the United States\u2013 we would need FOUR planets<\/a> if everyone on the planet consumed the same amount of resources as Americans. We live in a society that puts a lot of value in consumerism and immediacy\u2013 we want WHAT we want, WHENEVER we want it. This insistence on having everything accessible, cheap, and NOW has put a lot of pressure on our natural systems and creates an excessive amount of waste. How much waste? In the US, residents create about 4.4 pounds of trash<\/a> per person per day. Our physical trash is made of paper, plastic, food and metals. When it gets tossed into the trash bin, where does it go? As you might imagine, there is no magical ‘away’ and our trash eventually comes back to haunt us. Landfills leak toxins<\/a> into groundwater, rubbish builds up in the middle of the ocean<\/a>, and plastics leech chemicals back into the environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n As we wrote about in in this post about how our trash affects the whole planet<\/a>, our trash never disappears.<\/p>\n Most municipalities have few ways to deal with trash, and often it’s a landfill on the outskirts of town. All modern landfills have linings to deal with rainwater collection and leeching, but older landfills may not have a liner, or the liner may be cracked, which means that all the chemicals, hazardous waste, mercury, and other toxins leak through the liner and into the ground. Landfills also leak toxins into the air<\/a>, most notably methane, a greenhouse gas much\u00a0more potent<\/a> than carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nHow do we deal with our garbage?<\/strong><\/h3>\n