How Much Trash Do You Produce?

The average American produces 4 1/2 pounds of trash per day.  Multiply that by 350 million people, and you can see that we produce an unimaginable amount of trash.  Yet, we're not the worst country.  Mexico produces about 30% more per person, and at the rate China is going, they will soon overtake us all

Typically, wealthy countries produce more trash than poorer nations, but as developing countries become wealthier and adopt higher standards of living, they're following our wasteful lead.  In 2025, China will be producing 562 million tons of solid waste per year, according to World Bank Estimates-almost three times the current output.

You can tell alot about a society by the amount of paper waste it produces.  According to the World Bank statistics, trash composition varies dramatically across countries of different income levels.  Poor countries have a high proportion of organic waste from food scraps and grass clippings.  Paper, on the other hand, is the single largest component of waste in high income countries.  About one-third of the paper waste in the U.S. comes from the corrugated cardboard boxes in which nearly everything we buy gets packaged and shipped.

The good news is that a lot of the paper trash in our country is recycled.  About 62% of paper is recycled or composted, but falls short of the 86% that we could theoretically reach.

Bottom line, recycling alone won't solve our trash problems.  Remember to reduce, reuse and recycle.  You may see your recycle bin reduced a  lot.  My goal is to put my recycle bin out for collection once a month.  Right now, I put it out every two weeks.  I"ve got a long way to go.