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How green is Trash?

A study of the environmental impact of Trash

~ Greencard for: Trash ~

	Weight:	1	Kg
	Lifespan:	500	Years
	Enegy to make:	14	Kwh
	Energy use:	2	Kwh per year
	Co2 footprint	9	Kg
	Chemical footprint:		High
	Waste footprint:	100	%
	Carbon offset:	12	Trees

Every year 130 million tons of America's trash ends up in landfills. 16.9 million tonnes for the UK. An area of 109 square miles was already used as landfill in the UK

What goes into Trash
About one third of household waste we produce is composed of paper; another third is organic waste (food scraps and garden waste) and the final third is made up of glass, metals, plastics, textiles, wood. Below is a pie chart showing what goes into a typical landfill site.








Recycling and material recovery
By the time material gets to landfill nearly all hope of recycling or reusing is lost, even though most material going to landfill could be recycled the fact that it ends up in landfill can only illustrate the failure of current waste management legislation. Capturing methane to use as fuel from landfill sites can hardly be called an efficient way of recycling the potential energy in household waste.


Factoids [18]

Landfill waste density is typically considered to be 0.7 - 0.85 tonnes/m3. For degraded waste, the density rises to 0.86 - 1 tonnes/m3.

Approximately 50% of household waste is potentially recyclable, and a further 20% is compostable.

Landfill sites like this produce greenhouse gases because rotting organic waste emits methane. If garbage is burned, however, it emits CO2. Almost everything we produce, consume and throw away means greenhouse gas emissions today. Waste and waste water accounts for about 3 per cent of man-made emissions, says the World Resources Institute.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces about 4.4 pounds (2 kg) of garbage a day,

Up to 60% of the rubbish that ends up in the dustbin could be recycled.

The unreleased energy contained in the average dustbin each year could power a television for 5,000 hours.

The largest lake in the Britain could be filled with rubbish from the UK in 8 months.

The largest lake in the Britain could be filled with rubbish from the UK in 8 months.

On average, 16% of the money you spend on a product pays for the packaging, which ultimately ends up as rubbish.

As much as 50% of waste in the average dustbin could be composted.

Up to 80% of a vehicle can be recycled.

9 out of 10 people would recycle more if it were made easier.

Recycling creates 6 times as many jobs as land filling.

99% of all consumer goods are no longer being used 6 months after their purchase.

For every single garbage can that is filled, 70 equivalent cans of garbage were produced by all the various manufacturing processes that created the waste content.

Every year we throw away 24 million tons of leaves and grass.

Leaves alone account for 75% of our solid waste in the fall.

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