How Long Does It Take Trash To Decompose?

Every product, package, and food item has a life cycle. Some are recyclable, but unfortunately, some are not and end up thrown away. Even when an item is discarded, this does not mark the end of its product life. 

Whether it ends up in a landfill or illegally dumped, it takes many years for it to decompose.

Trash Carts...Weigh More Than Meets the Eye!

It is unbelievable how much trash Americans generate through the course of a week. Estimates are that “1,600 pounds is the amount of trash the average American produces annually. With the garbage produced in America alone, you could form a line of filled-up garbage trucks that would reach the moon”. 

As astonishing as this number is, it’s just the tip of the iceberg since today’s fast-paced culture perpetuates the problem with readily available, pre-packaged everything! In fact, speaking of packaging, “72 million tons of containers and packaging in 2009 ended up in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream or MSW. 

I Prefer to Look At It As, "The Bag's Half Full"

If you’ve ever opened a brand new bag of potato chips only to find the bag half, or even a third full, you are not alone. This disappointing phenomenon is called over-packaging and greatly adds to our landfill problems in the United States. 

Potato chips aren’t the only culprit. Cereal, cookies, over-the-counter medicines, candy, toys....the list goes on and on. As The National, an online publication, reported recently, “over-wrapped food items are a principal source of the mounds of unnecessary waste that wind up in the nation's landfills. It is common to see food packaged inside cling wrap, inside a plastic container, inside a box, inside a bag. 

Do Trash Incinerators Do More Harm Than Good?

As we discussed in a previous article titled, Waste To Energy...Turning Landfills To Goldmines, burning waste extracted from a landfill can prove to be not only green and responsible, but a great source of potential energy.

At what expense, however, do the benefits come? Many argue that incinerators create health issues, will have a negative impact on the environment, and prove to be very costly.

The Garbage Disposal Controversy

While remodeling your kitchen, you install a $200 under-the-sink garbage disposal. Finally, the last twist of the wrench. A big job but well worth it….it’s done. You turn it on to make sure it works and doesn’t leak. Perfect. Now you’re ready…..to not use it. Not use it? What? 

The controversy spiraling around the use of garbage disposals for food scraps vs throwing it in the trash to be buried in the landfill has many facets and can get pretty heated.

What Job Could Be More Dangerous…..?

According to TIME magazine, Refuse and Recyclable Material Collector ranks #6 on the 2012 Top 10 most Dangerous Jobs list. This is actually an improvement over previous years, where it held as high as the #4 position in the list of Top 10 Most Dangerous Jobs.

List25.com ranked Sanitation Workers as the #7 most dangerous in the world and listed it before such jobs as Search & Rescue, Linemen & Power Workers, Firefighters, Police Officers, and Roofers.

Think these rankings can’t possibly be true? Statistically, waste collection ranks high on these lists due to caustic chemicals; inhaling dust, smoke and fumes; broken glass; medical waste; objects falling from an overloaded container; and, most dangerous of all, traffic accidents involving drivers who have left their trucks.