Now picture looking back at the beach and instead of seeing water, you see a dump. It is around 10 feet high, filled with trash. All the water is a dark shade of brown. The stench is horrifying. Any fish that used to live in the water are long dead. This could be the future of the world, a planet of overflowing trash. People have been carelessly throwing things away. All of this garbage has been piling and piling. Most have been sent to landfills, but they're now overflowing.
Picture the government out of places to put the trash. They must put it anywhere they can find. People keep throwing things away, trash keeps piling. People start throwing their trash in the ocean because garbage trucks are charging a ridiculous amount of money to take trash in to landfills. Everywhere you look is pollution. People find it hard just to catch a breath. Is this the future you would like to have? Or would you try to put a stop to what is already in the process.
Our trash is not only taking up land but its also destroying resources, animals, and their way of life (Garrett). According to The Environmental Crisis, Landfills in the US close at a rate of ten per week. (Bea Quirk) The fees of landfills are going to increase regardless because the land is getting scarcer. “Landfills are getting full, land is getting harder to find, and so they are doing things so people will divert waste elsewhere,” says Courtney Lorenz, environmental manager for the Skanska USA Building Inc. According to Garrett, landfills use the natural process of decomposition to rot away trash. Many landfills accept household hazardous waste, but it takes more money and time to treat them. Since more and more trash is generated over time, newer landfills are needed created. In 2001, Americans generated around 225 million tons of trash (ASME). Only about one-third of America's trash is recycled; the rest is either incinerated or dumped in landfills.
Incinerators are another way of reducing trash (Garrett). Incinerators “toast” trash by burning them and reducing them in the process. Burning trash can cause many emissions harmful to the environment, as well as to human beings. All of these places, by law, must be regulated by the EPA and Radiation Department. Incinerators usually take from three to five years to construct (The Environmental Crisis). The ash of incinerators contains a host of dangerous toxic chemicals. Incinerators in America have suffered frequent breakdowns and repairs.
According to the FPA, source reduction means using less material in the first place. Source reduction reduces the volume of packaging material that must be recycled or discarded after consumption. And Garrett figured out that source reduction reduces pollutants, saves energy, conserves resources, and also reduces the need for the other trash centers.
With the information of Water Encyclopedia, garbage has been discarded into the ocean since humans have lived on seashores or near waterways flowing into the sea. The major problem lately has been plastic in the ocean. Since the 1940s, plastic has increased dramatically. It can harm or kill many animals. Many animals mistake the plastic for food and eat it. They have also become entangled in discarded or lost nets.
Now this might sound a little crazy, but by using cloth diapers, it will reduce the amount of trash by a huge amount (The Environmental Crisis). Disposable diapers take up 2 percent of the space in modern landfills. Americans throw away 18 billion disposable diapers a year. Plastic backing and pads of disposables do not decompose for centuries.
One of the most important ways of reducing trash is to recycle. Almost everyone knows what recycling is. According to the FPA, recycling means taking something and turning it into something else. Recycling produces no air pollution and no ash.
There has also been much talk about the disposal of trash in space. According to Space Travel, disposal of trash in space takes careful planning and good aim, so the trash doesn't hit the Space Station or a visiting shuttle. The debris should burn within weeks or months. “We don't want to create debris even if it's short-lived, unless it's overwhelmingly necessary,” says Nicholas Johnson, head of the NASA's orbital debris.
A lot of surplus trash in the US will be used as fuel to generate electricity and steam power (ASME). In 2001, 102 waste-to-energy plants operated in 31 American states. The plants produce nearly 30 million tons of municipal trash annually, which produces 2,800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power nearly 2.5 million homes.
In order to prevent a massive overload of trash in America, we should keep searching for ways to reduce the garbage. It is important to recycle, as well as promoting recycling. Start thinking before you are about to throw something in the bin. It is vital that we take action. Just think about how much trash America is creating. One less water bottle in a landfill is more important than you think. Think about EVERYONE in America throwing a water bottle in a landfill. That is a lot of water bottles. The garbage of today doesn't just carry a bad odor, but it is also bad for the environment. I think that we should use source reduction and recycling to reduce trash.
Since incinerators are harmful, cost a lot of money, and take a long time to construct; I don't think we should use them. I think that landfills should only accept certain garbage. They shouldn't accept anything that could be recycled. Putting trash in space can be very dangerous. I agree with Nicholas Johnson and that it should only be done when absolutely necessary, for many things can go wrong in space. This makes it a very dangerous method of reducing trash. All in all, trash reducing shouldn't be a problem as long as we put all our minds together. We just need to take action.
