In elementary school, we were all drilled with the “reduce, reuse, recycle” mantra. At the time, we probably didn’t think much of it. At age nine, it’s hard to comprehend the effects of our environmental choices. Once we are old enough to understand the damage that trash does to the planet, it’s no longer a staple in our education. But the gaps in American public education is a topic for another time. I want to talk about the effects you can have on the world around you by recycling (or not ).
The average person produces almost five pounds of garbage per day. That’s 1,825 pounds of trash in one year PER PERSON. Now take the seven billion or so people on the planet… the numbers get scary very quickly. However, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates 75% of our trash could be recycled. Sounds great, right? Well, it would be great if we weren’t only recycling 30% of it.
Walking by any trash can on campus, in a park, or in homes and businesses, there will undoubtedly be numerous items that are recyclable. And all of those potentially reusable materials are filling up landfills and sometimes oceans all over the world. Almost 1.5 million pounds of trash ends up in the ocean each year. This has disastrous effects on ocean animals, coral reefs, and all the small ecosystems that exist in our waters. Fish and other marine animals like seabirds can’t process many of our waste materials and thousands of them die from plastic ingestion or strangulation.
PSA: if you don’t snip the plastic rings around soda cans before throwing them away, you might as well go strangle a sea turtle yourself.
You’d think that once the garbage is in a landfill, it’s gone forever and not a problem anymore. However, all the waste that ends up in craters all of the world continues to harm our environment for years after it’s thrown out. As garbage decomposes, it releases a massive amount of methane which is destroying our atmosphere. It also releases a liquid called leachate (gross, right?). Leachate seeps into our groundwater and can contaminate everything it touches. Sending recyclable materials into the landfills just feeds the methane and leachate.
Recycling in America has improved so much in the past 30 years, which is wonderful — but we still have a long way to go. If we don’t want to live out the future in Wall-E, we have to start taking steps towards a greener USA and a greener world.
Sources: EPA Archive, Do Something, NOAA, Slate