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Twenty years ago , the late " garbologist " William Rathje of the University of Arizona and I penned an op - ed on enviro - myths , touching on issue from scraps to the health of the planet . Our point : To solve environmental problems , we all need to work with the fact , not palpate - near sound bites and myth - perceptions .
One in particular stubborn enviro - myth continues to persist : We ’re bury ourselves in a growing mountain of packaging waste . Having dedicate my calling to help people downplay waste product , I find this impression puzzling . But let ’s have another look at this myth … and find in its debunking a cause for festivity .
A truck dumps trash into a landfill.
The wage increase of waste product ?
Looking at the stop from 1994 to 2012 , the number of U.S. household rose nearly 25 percent . Garbage — what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) call municipal solid waste — typically grows in lineage with the number of house and all the Modern " stuff " each house need . Interestingly , EPA information indicates that barren during that period grew only 20 percent , less than house growth .
Good . That mean Americans are generating a bit less wastefulness per house than in the past .
A truck dumps trash into a landfill.
But what ’s really encouraging is that packaging waste generated during that period of time did not increase ( well , it did by 0.3 percentage , basically equal to a rounding error error ) . While overall waste increase 20 percent , publicity waste remained ceaseless . As a result , packaging waste decline from 36 percent of our total wastefulness to 30 percentage .
This in force news stands in staring contrast to anticipation in 1994 . Back then , the EPA express that by 2010 , packaging wasteland would get by nearly a third to report for 38 percent of barren . That did n’t happen . alternatively , 24 million rafts of annual packaging waste just did n’t show up .
Where did it go ? Did we begin carrying everything home in old boxes and bottle ? Hardly . There are two primary reasons for all that miss promotional material waste .
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Whittling away waste
First , remember the mantra " reduce , reuse , recycle " ? Reduce comes first for a good reason : It ’s the best means to forbid waste in the first place . ( The technological term is source reduction . ) In the United States , packaging has exit on a unfaltering and substantial dieting as we transition from expectant , traditional materials to materials that are stronger and lightheaded , such as plastics , multilayer films and multi - substantial carton .
For illustration , have you point out that most plastic bottle now are significantly fragile and idle than a few year back , easier to crush before recycling ? This same phenomenon has been come about across the packaging world , as engineer figure out how to use as little packaging stuff as possible .
The use of lightweight materials not only reduces waste in the first position , it also has other environmental benefits . Using sullen alternative in packaging not only would increase the overall amount of packaging wasteland , a Franklin Associates bailiwick indicates that it would also increase Energy Department habit by up to 80 pct and world thaw potential drop by even more .
This follows a vestigial axiom : less corporeal , less environmental wallop , regardless if the material comes from trees ( newspaper ) , ore ( metals ) , silica ( glass ) or muscularity rootage ( plastics ) . Thus , choosing the right packaging has far reaching environmental consequences .
The 2d reason for all that missing promotion wasteland should be a source of pride . Of all the packaging waste matter generated from 1994 to 2012 , more than one-half of it was recovered through recycling or DOE recovery . accord to the EPA , Americans together with remove it from the waste current , boil down the share of packaging that weave up buried in landfill from 66.5 percent to 48.5 percentage . In special , the body politic made meaning increase in reuse rates of newspaper , alloy , glass and plastic . [ What We Recycle ( Infographic ) ]
In total , thanks to source reduction and recycling , we reduced the part of packaging headed to landfill , on a per caput basis , by a whopping 39 per centum — in fewer than 20 days !
finish up the job
While those advances truly call for celebration , there is more to be done . We should strive to " keep the molecules in play , " meaning reusing and recycling packaging as much as potential . Recycling pace are growing but should be much higher .
So , feel free to celebrate notable onward motion thisEarth mean solar day . And let your friends and household have it off that you ’re quietly participating in a nationwide exploit to dramatically reduce promotion waste .
As I ’ve said for more than 20 long time — keep reducing , reprocess and recycling … in that order.
