Alarming trash stats

[Frank Lee]

Who Knew? - Yahoo! News

I was aware of the soaring household energy use vs. years past but didn't realize U.S. slobs put out so much more garbage per capita too- plus there are so many more capitas.

[gone-ot]

..."throw-away" at it's best -- or, worse -- depending upon point-of-view.

[Cd]

The thing that I didn't like about this segment was that it leaves the viewer with the impression that throwing away trash is something that has happened since the beginning of time, and that it is just part of life. There isn't enough emphasis on the need to streamline what we throw away.

[Piwoslaw]

Not everything should be recycled, especially if it can be reused. For example, it's much better to burn tires in the backyard, or to break grass bottles on bike lanes. Oh, and car batteries and thermometers have cool stuff inside which the kids just love to play with.

[PaleMelanesian]

LOL

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

Not everything should be recycled, especially if it can be reused. For example, it's much better to burn tires in the backyard...

Agreed but tires are better used to burn after being processed and burned with coal. Used in power plants it can provide energy and have cleaner emissions that coal alone.

[PaleMelanesian]

When I took out the trash last night, there were only TWO drawstring kitchen-sized bags in there. One of them was diapers. We're in the process of converting to cloth diapers, which will eliminate half of that. One kitchen bag a week? We could change over to monthly trash pickup instead of weekly.

Some neighbors have two of the big wheeled trash cans every week.

[hypermiler01]

The good news is that over 50% is biodegradable.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Cd

The thing that I didn't like about this segment was that it leaves the viewer with the impression that throwing away trash is something that has happened since the beginning of time...

Sure it is. What the heck do you think most archeologists dig up? Ancient trash, that's what. They don't all get the gold out of King Tut's tomb - which I suppose was arguably just another way of throwing away trash, anyway :-)

Though I agree with the general point about trash volumes. I see my neighbors putting out a wheelie bin or two every week, while I average about half a small trash can every two weeks - and I pay the same as they do :-(

[Laurentiu]

does anyone take in account the garbage disposal stuff ? Because if I remember correctly a lot of American houses have one and nobody's counting that...