Trash Facts

 

    Trash is a global issue that is not often brought up as something to fix. If more people were educated on the amount of trash and build up there is around the world, maybe more can be done to control it. After some searching around, we some facts about trash that might make it a more thoughtful subject.

    Americans generate almost half of the world's total waste and that says a lot considering Americans only make up 5% of the world's population! According to Drew Brucker at Rubicon.com, that averages about 4 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons per year! Holy trash, that's a lot for one country! It gets worse when we think about the trash around the world that can fill the New Orleans Superdome over 1,500 times, more specifically, the hazardous waste generated. 

    When we think about growing a family, we don't generally consider the growing diaper waste that affects the landfills. Potty training can total about "18 billion disposable diapers a year, 49 million per day and 570 per second." It costs $350 billion annually for diaper disposal. That's a lot of families growing!

    Now let's consider a little food waste that shows to be too much wasted food. Around the world, if just one fourth of the food wasted was saved, it could feed about 870 million people. Americans alone throw out about  43,000 tons of food daily and 1,200 pound of that is organic matter that could be repurposed compost. There's too many hungry people for this much to go to waste.

    We need to do better globally on what is considered waste and trash. Maybe start focusing on more repurposed products and recycling. Costs alone could go down around the world with recycling and repurposing waste and lives could be saved with passing around food to those who need it instead of just trashing it. For more facts on trash, you can visit our source: https://www.rubicon.com/blog/trash-reason-statistics-facts/