What Are We Doing With Our Waste?

Source: http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2009/0907/360_plastic_ocean_0731.jpg

When plastics were invented, it transformed the world. It is light, durable, and malleable to create many products that humans utilize.  For many years, modern-day plastics were praised and thought of as a great alternative to glass.  However, with more understanding and awareness of how toxic it can be, such as BPA, and DEHP, many people are becoming more skeptical of container plastic.  Yet, few people are looking at whether or not the plastic they're purchasing can be recycled.  Just think about all the plastic you buy - water bottles, take-away food, toys for children, women's' hairbands, piping for water, wrapping of vegetables, coating of wires - it is everywhere!  But what happens to that plastic when we're done with it?  Well, according to Dr. Jenna Jambeck at the University of Georgia - "8 million metric tons of plastics are entering the oceans every year" - a study utilizing scientific calculations to quantify the amount of plastics entering the ocean, reported on 12 February 2015:

"... found between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2010 from people living within 50 kilometers of the coastline. That year, a total of 275 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated in those 192 coastal countries.
Jambeck, an assistant professor of environmental engineering in the UGA College of Engineering and the study's lead author, explains the amount of plastic moving from land to ocean each year using 8 million metric tons as the midpoint: "Eight million metric tons is the equivalent to finding five grocery bags full of plastic on every foot of coastline in the 192 countries we examined."
To determine the amount of plastic going into the ocean, Jambeck "started it off beautifully with a very grand model of all sources of marine debris," said study co-author Roland Geyer, an associate professor with the University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, who teamed with Jambeck and others to develop the estimates.
They began by looking at all debris entering the ocean from land, sea and other pathways. Their goal was to develop models for each of these sources. After gathering rough estimates, "it fairly quickly emerged that the mismanaged waste and solid waste dispersed was the biggest contributor of all of them," he said. From there, they focused on plastic.
"For the first time, we're estimating the amount of plastic that enters the oceans in a given year," said study co-author Kara Lavender Law, a research professor at the Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association. "Nobody has had a good sense of the size of that problem until now."
The framework the researchers developed isn't limited to calculating plastic inputs into the ocean."

What is your plastic footprint? Do you know where your rubbish/garbage goes?  Unfortunately, more and more of our rubbish is going into the ocean.  The fact is, we are running out of land to bury our non-renewable or recycle-able wastes and more of it is getting into the oceans each year.  In 2012, the World Bank reviewed the world rubbish and published "What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management"

According to this report, places considered to be 'high income', such as countries within the European Union, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, and Australia have an average of 1.2 kg (2.64 lb) of garbage, per person, per day; about 44% of the worlds waste generation every day.  That's a significant amount of waste that goes into landfills, dumps, and thermal disposal!!  Sadly, only 1 - 19% of the solid waste generated goes into compost, when nearly half (46%) of the waste produced is indeed organic - food, horticulture, animals foods - that could be composted.  And, of the 36% of waste created that is recycle-able, such as paper, plastic, glass, and metals, a mere 1% is actually recycled...  The obvious question is, 'why don't we recycle and compost more?'. If more than half - 55% - of our waste could be renewed for use, either biologically, or for human consumption (such as plastics and metals), why aren't the leading countries doing just that - leading the way - for the benefit of our planet and future generations?

Source: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Screen%20Shot%202012-06-06%20at%208.20.17%20PM.png

"Solid wastes are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash not only represents and attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but a serious economic and public health problem." - Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the USA

Let us reconsider our use and disposal of wastes...  everything in life is connected. What we do to the world, we do to ourselves!