Quick Study: Where Our Garbage Goes

In a calm stretch of the northern Pacific lies the Eastern Garbage Patch, a stew of trash twice the size of Texas. Deadly for ocean life, the icky area holds some of the two billion tons of waste we create each year. While technology offers hope for more enlightened disposal, the clock is ticking: Garbage will double by 2030.

By Kristina Dell

From Reader's Digest

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The Granger Collection, NY

1739: Benjamin Franklin petitions to end commercial waste dumping in Philadelphia.

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Classicrefusetrucks.com

1937: First U.S. compactor truck built, though it's not widely used until the late 1940s.

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1973: Curbside recycling begins in Berkeley, California.

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NY Daily News

1987: Trash goes tabloid: Six states and three countries refuse to accept Mobro 4000, a Long Island garbage barge, causing brief but widespread concern about possible Northeast landfill shortages.

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• NIMBY - Landfills are our country's No. 1 waste management tool, but they can release toxic chemicals into the water and soil around them as well as methane, a global warmer, into the air. In the 1990s, the EPA shut down thousands of leaky landfills, building larger ones with stricter environmental controls. Which means that if you do live near one, it's likely to be a whopper: There were 8,000 landfills in the United States in 1988, and there are fewer than 2,000 today. Where trash ends up is also a touchy, state-by-state game of hot potato. Ever since a court ruled decades ago that New Jersey had to accept others' trash, states have been buying and bartering for dumping rights beyond their own borders.



• The recycling slump - Demand for commodities like paper and glass has plummeted, causing the price of recyclables to decrease by 50 to 70 percent. In Berkeley, California, recyclables garnered about $200 a ton last fall, but today they fetch only about $35. Some cities have seen recycling turn from a revenue stream to an expense, since they can't even recoup the cost of sorting the goods.



• Reuse, recycle … burn? - "Waste is a terrible thing to waste," says Bruce Parker, president of the National Solid Waste Management Association. His trade group supports giving trash a second life—and landfills a break—by following Europe's lead and investing in more waste-to-energy plants, which convert trash to fuel. As much as 55 percent of waste in countries like Denmark and Sweden heads to such plants, compared with only 8 percent in the United States. Resistance comes from environmental groups, like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, who say recycling is cheaper and cleaner. The waste-to-energy camp counters that it's not necessarily an either-or: "Countries that have the most waste-to-energy also do the most recycling," says Nickolas Themelis of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University.

Recycling 33.4%

Incinerators 12.6%

Recession recycling
$10 - The amount per ton Harvard used to be paid for its recyclables

$35 - The amount per ton Harvard now has to pay to get rid of them

1.7 million
The number of homes the U.S. could power for 24 hours if we turned a day's worth of garbage into fuel

80% - How much of our trash is recyclable

33% - How much of our trash we recycle

60 Days - The average time it takes for a can to be recycled and placed back on the store shelf

$304,479 - Cost per acre to build a landfill


Trashy nations
Who's tossing out the most—and least—junk worldwide (pounds per capita)

Ireland 1,764

Norway 1,764

U.S. 1,672

Netherlands 1,375

U.K. 1,287

Japan 913

Mexico 759

China 253

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