Where Does Your Garbage Go?
It is almost inconceivable how much garbage people produce every year, an average of 1,460 pounds per person. That’s 200 million tons of garbage total. Building a new home can generate almost thirteen tons of waste. Big and small businesses add to that total.
We go to great effort to cart the bulk of the trash away so it is not seen and can’t offend. And although our recycling efforts are improving, still less than 25% is re-used leaving the rest for landfills.
Of course this is only calculated estimates based on reports from sanitation companies. There is the ever present litter around every city, town, and highway. This litter gets washed away by rain and moved about by wind may eventually get picked up by reluctant community service workers, some may get covered with earth and eventually decay. Out here in California it will most likely get into the Bay or Pacific ocean to be a statistical part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
This heap of debris floating in the Pacific is twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.
The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man’s land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
You may think that throwing your cigarette butt on the ground does no harm, or letting that single plastic bag fly off in the wind (known as urban tumbleweeds) is unavoidable. But when everyone adds a little trash to the pile it adds up. We have been building up our piles of non-decaying trash for nearly a hundred years. it has become noticeable.
If only people would give a moments thought before they threw anything on the ground or out their car window.
