How to Help Landfill Space with Recycling

We all consume food and drinks, but do you ever stop and wonder what happens to our waste? We just throw it in that garbage can and let the garbage men pick it up. After they pick it up all we do is worry about getting the can before it rolls into the road. If you stop and think about how much trash the average American produce's, it adds up to be 1,460 pounds per year. (Yahoo, 2002) Now take that number and multiply it by how many Americans there are and that's your grand total. At that amount of trash we are producing we will run out of places to put it all. There are many easy and simple ways to help reduce the amount of trash produced.

When you think of a land fill you just think of a giant mound of garbage. Truthfully is it way more then that. Landfills use the latest technology to keep the community as safe as possible from the dangers decomposing garbage can pose to the environment. "There are about five layers to a landfill. The base is a clay barrier that prevents soil and water contamination. Above that is a plastic layer which also helps prevents soil and water contamination. Next is the leachate collection which is perforated pipes in a layer of sand that collects rainwater that has filtered through the landfill. Then above that is the refuse cell, it's the collected garbage surrounded by soil by the daily cover. The daily cover is the top of all the layers. The daily cover is soil that is compacted on top of the garbage at the end of each day. Garbage disposal is no simple matter. The threat of contaminating our water and air doesn't just go away when the landfill reaches its capacity. The garbage continues to decompose, and must be monitored long after the landfill reaches maximum capacity" (Solid Waste, 2000). The trash production in the United States has almost tripled since 1960. This trash is handled in various ways. About 27 percent of the trash is recycled or composted, 16 percent is burned and 57 percent is buried in landfills. The amount of trash buried in landfills has doubled since 1960. The United States ranks about in the middle of the major countries (United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France and Japan) in landfill disposal. The United Kingdom ranks highest, burying about 90 percent of its solid waste in landfills (HowStuffWorks, 1998).

The best way to help keep waste down to a minimum is to recycle. With recycling we can dramatically reduce the amount of waste that goes to the landfill. The first real recycling program was introduced in New York City in the 1890s. The city's first recycling plant was built in 1898. (Recycling Rules!!, 1998) There are many types of materials that can be recycled. They include: Aluminum, batteries, glass, motor oil, paint, paper, and plastics. For the majority of these you can put outside next to your mailbox on pick-up day. The other materials can be dropped off at your local dump, and they will carry on the process from there. About 75% of our garbage can be recycled. There is information out there that not a lot of people know about like there is no limit to the amount of times and aluminum can, could be recycled (Recycling Rules!!, 1998).

When you crumple up a piece of paper you never wonder what you're actually doing. Paper, which comes from trees, is a valuable source of our everyday life. Yet we throw it away instead of recycling it. "In fact each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. With those numbers that would represent a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings and 60 pounds less of air pollution" (Recycling Rules!!, 1998). This is all done by just recycling paper. We use a lot of paper, more then most countries. "Paper is everywhere, just think of your Sunday newspaper it takes 500,000 trees a week. Recycling a single run of the Sunday New York Times would save 75,000 trees" (Recycling