PhotoLink
READ MORE ABOUT:
We all know that there are plenty of not-so lovely mounds of land littered around our nation that are filled with, well, litter. Picture a landfill. Go ahead, do it—what do you imagine filling it up? Rusted car parts, dirty plastic, torn up newspapers, trashed electronics and splintered wood. Something like that? Well, one of those kinds of trash is taking up a hell of a lot more room than the others—and it clogs up 40% of the whole joint.
Got an idea which one it is—metal, plastic, paper, wood, e-waste?
If you guessed paper, you're right. According to the EPA, paper accounts for a massive 40% of all the waste that gets relegated to landfills. Newspapers alone account for up to 13% of the space in landfills (thought that number should start declining as the newspapers do). Which is all pretty maddening, when you consider the fact that almost all paper is entirely recyclable. Or that there are so many viable alternatives to using much paper these days. Or that the world's richest self made woman made her fortune buying scrap paper material from American landfills and shipping it to China—proving that we can be putting the stuff to good use.
Why so much paper? Well, it's hard to determine the current influx of new paper into landfills, and it's likely not because there's so much new paper hitting the dirt?though there is plenty of it. The biggest reason may be that paper biodegrades extremely slowly in landfills: some studies report that you can still read newspapers that have been packed in landfills since the '60s. So the percentage is largely a cumulative one?we've shipped paper to landfills more consistently than any other product for many decades now.
The solution? Some forward thinking eco-innovation would be nice—sure, China's thirst for raw materials and low expenses make the used paper enterprise more lucrative. But there's no reason to think we couldn't pioneer a profitable native operation here, too. Let's put an end to frivolous junk mail and phone books. Let's support innovative treeless paper companies to discourage traditional, unsustainable paper industry. And more than anything—let's recycle our paper folks. It's easy. It's a matter of dropping the paper into a different bin.
Let's start thinking outside the landfill.
More Green Your Brain:
How Many Gallons of Water Does it Take to Make Your Latte?
How Many People Live on Threatened Drylands?
How Many Sharks Get Killed for their Fins Every Year?
