Waste...What is it?

Waste is a human issue. Nothing else on this planet produces waste. We are literally the only things that do this, let’s let that sink in for a moment…

In nature, waste doesn’t exist. You know the expression, ‘One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure?’ Yeah—nature is the OG of that. Everything in nature has a purpose, it is the original multi-purpose-er. When one creature dies, another creature eats it. When a leaf falls, ants harvest it, to do whatever it is ants do with leaves., i.e., natural systems reuse all materials.

The average amount of waste produced per person in the U.S. is 4.6lbs per day = ~32lbs weekly Sounds like a lot huh?! How much trash do you think you produce in a week compared to the average?

Cities and industries built on mountains of trash

Civilizations for millennia, including ours, have been built on trash. Seriously. Cities have been built on trash since Trojan time to more modern ones. For example, Manhattan’s ground level is 6-15 feet higher than it was in the colonial era! Allocating trash as a filler for construction was the waste management strategy for Manhattan back in the day.

The U.S. is one of the most wasteful developed countries — producing 230+ million tons of trash annually. Nearly ~70% of this waste produced is recyclable. Unfortunately, less than 25% of it actually gets recycled.

Why? Poor waste management infrastructure and communication— industrially, in public, and in the home.

Waste = $$$

Trash is a multi-billion dollar global empire with market size of $2,080.0 BILLION in 2019 alone ...King of the mountain, indeed. We pay to throw out our stuff and then it goes...somewhere??

Here are 3 more rants to conclude:

The trash that goes to landfills decomposes very slow, extremely slow in fact. This trash will just sit there, in the landfill, most of it for longer than you and I will live to see. Oxygen and water are essential for trash or anything to decompose; landfills are designed to be dry and have little contact with air making decomposition nearly non-existent.

Did you know trash creates emissions?! For every 1 ton of garbage, 6.2 tons of CO2e are emitted. Waste emissions come from the organic materials in the trash that produce methane as it rots. So if the U.S. creates 230 million tons of trash per year that additionally creates roughly 1.4 BILLION tons of CO2e annually.

Welcome to trash island ...Ever hear of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch(GPGP)? Welp, it sure exists. It’s not what you think though. It’s not literally piles of solid waste making a land-like-mass. It’s more like a gyre of plastic sludge—broken down plastic particles. The GPGP is not the only of its kind either. There is a patch in every ocean.