LANDFILLS
Landfills
As I drive
to work each day I pass an area that was once a landfill site. The owner of the
property built a Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse on the site by covering the
trash with compacted fill dirt. This means the trash still exists below
contaminating the earth. Do you want the
world to become a large garbage dump for future generations, or do you want to
help to decrease the amount of waste going into our landfills?
Did you know…?
Every year American
consumers fill enough garbage trucks to create a line stretching from the earth
halfway to the moon.
We do not
stop to consider what happens to our trash long-term after we dispose of it.
For many consumers, out of sight is out of mind. We can see two things from the moon: (1) the
Great Wall of China and (2) the 2,200 acre “Fresh Kills Landfill” located on
Staten Island in New York. We create so
much waste. From junk mail, plastic water bottles, takeout food wrappers, to
the extreme packaging manufacturers use to package products – many of these
products could be recycled, but instead the garbage lies in a landfill contaminating
the earth for years to come.
Did you know…?
According to the EPA,
in 1999, the state of Oregon had 33 active landfill sites occupying between
51-70% of our available state land.
Consumers
often ignore claims that we are running out of active landfills and available
sites for a future landfill, so is this true?
The EPA reports that the number of active landfills in the United States
dropped from 7,924 in 1988 to only 1,654 in 2005. While these figures are a bit outdated, one
thing is clear, landfills are on the decline. Combine the reduced number of
sites with increasing regulations that restrict the size of a new landfill site
and it is clear that the claims are true.
Something
has to stop! Think about the items in your
wastebasket and consider the alternatives, such as composting or
recycling. Most Americans are aware that
we need to recycle more, however we still have a long way to go. Government regulated bans on specific items,
like plastic grocery bags, helps decrease waste in landfills and helps protect
our environment. Consumer attitudes and
behaviors toward recycling are changing as the concern for the environment
increases.
Did you know…?
Studies estimate that
American consumers throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.
Recovery is the
solution to this problem and to have an impact we need to first decrease our
volume as consumers. All of our efforts
to educate and inform people to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” are working
because, even though the world’s population will continue to grow, our landfill
use will be continue to decrease and the reliance on recycling will increase
significantly.
References
http://www.postcom.org/eco/facts.about.landfills.htm
Landfills have popped up all over the country, considering trash industry is such a profitable business many officials take advantage of that. Its unfair to the environment, and I do not condone the practice of litter..
ReplyDelete-Land Source Container Service, Inc.