Did you know that 33 million tons of food enters landfills annually?
Nearly 40% of food produced in the United States is wasted annually.
150,000 tons of food is wasted daily in the U.S., which equates to about a pound per person.
With cold and flu season upon us, it's important to focus on something we normally forget about: Waste. Being sick produces a lot of waste, from tissues to throat drop wrappers. All of this waste heads directly to a landfill where it will sit for decades. Here are three ways to have a low waste sick season without hurting the environment.
The reduce-reuse-recycle philosophy of my youth evoked images of bottles, cans, and paper. My friends and I lamented the poor animals with necks caught in plastic rings from six-packs of cans. To this day, I diligently seek out recycling bins everywhere I go, from restaurants to house parties.
But what to do with my old clothes?
You just bought a new lipstick and you're so excited to use it. It's part of a huge, mainstream beauty company you totally trust, too. After weeks of using the lipstick down to the very last bit, there's nothing left. What do you do with the lipstick container? Dump it in the trash of course.
Plastic and plastic byproducts can take hundreds of years to decompose...IF they ever decompose at all. Toothbrushes, toilet bowl scrubbers, and towel racks are just a few items that are generally made from plastic or a plastic byproduct. I bet there are tons of pounds of those items alone all over the planet. There are always other options!
Everyday, we create waste. It's inevitable. We discard – hopefully into the proper receptacle – items that we no longer want, need, or desperately need to get rid of for sanitary purposes. Food wrappers, packaging, and a handful of undesirable items are hauled off into the landfill. This is a luxury we have by living in a first world country. What I find mind blowing is that along with all our trash we get rid of, we also throw away the earth. It wasn't until I saw a trash bin piled high with yard waste that the absurdity of it all hit me.
As we learned in “What Happens to Food Scraps That are Thrown Away,” our landfills use “dry tomb” pits to contain waste, creating methane gas. But increasing numbers of landfill management companies are using that toxic gas to generate electricity.
With the holidays already here, our time of celebration may be filled with family, friends, gifts, and…waste? Yes, waste. One of the major contributors to landfill waste is the holiday seasons. With the large amounts of waste that get produced during the holidays, sometimes people can fall into a dangerous cultural mindset and think that its just normal part of the holidays. You want to be weary of this mindset because it’s certainly not healthy for the environment, which means it’s not healthy for you or others inhabiting this planet either.
We all know that composting is a good thing. But why is sending food scraps to the landfill a bad thing? Don’t they simply become compost there?