The Waste Of Waste

Heather Roger claims our current garbage disposal methods are short term and etiquette. Rogers’s position is clear that we need to minimize the use of landfills and create better means to discard trash. In supporting Rogers’s environment views I think that we need to create a more economic and environmental friendly garbage disposal system. Heather Rogers and Lars Eighner both acknowledge the issue with society’s throwaway mentality. Eighner proves that we throw away perfectly working stuff, having survived off others discarded materials. Eighner argues against excessive waste we create but does not have any prospected solutions. Whereas Rogers acknowledges the obvious need to minimize our consumption of waste but argues the need

A teacher once told me, “One mans trash is another mans treasure, what he doesn’t appreciate the next man will.” Until recently analyzing this statement I always pondered about it as a metaphor using the thoughts, and ideas of people, but after reading Garbology I have come up with a literal process of reusing trash. On average Americans wastes 220 million tons of waste generated each year in the United States which ends up in one of the over 3,500 landfills. According to Edward Humes, the author of Garbology, “Garbage has become one the most accurate measures of prosperity in the twenty-first-century America and the world,” which proves that trash is a means to improving the success rate of Americans. This reminds me of the words of Confucius who stated, “When a goal cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goal, adjust the action step” because with the knowledge from garbology we can

For centuries, Canada has been extracting and using all of the resources that we could at an increasingly shocking rate. Ever since the beginning, we have been seen as a resource-rich country, and with so much, it makes perfect sense that we are one of the most wasteful countries in the entire world. Our country extracts so much and much of that eventually ends up in landfills, in fact, Canada has one of the highest garbage rates and electricity consumption rates in the entire world.

As of January 1, 2003, the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario started to ship one hundred percent of its garbage into the landfills of Michigan.  In 2003, Toronto exported garbage at a

In Canada, a disparity exists among the provinces in terms of recycling efforts and initiatives. A recent study ranked the Canadian provinces in terms of recycling, and based the rankings on both access and utilization of recycling programs. The top three Canadian provinces in 2006 were Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and Ontario (Statistics Canada, 2008, para. 16-17). One might find it surprising that the smallest province in Canada is actually the national leader in terms of recycling. The worst province in Canada in terms

From farm to table getting our food and produce to the consumer is a tricky task. Even with all the planning millions of food ends up wasted a year. Many steps are already taken to reduce the amount of food being wasted but are they enough? In America alone 200 to 250 pounds is wasted per person per year! According the world resources institute “32 percent of the world’s food was never consumed in 2009”.

Have you thought about how much food is wasted? Just think about your supper last night did you throw any food away if you did have you ever thought about where it goes or what happens to it? Many people don’t realize that there is a lot of food that is thrown away every year. Not only do people in their homes throw away food but grocery stores also throw out a lot of food too. “Most people believe that grocery stores should donate their food instead of throwing it away but the reason why many stores don’t donate their food is because many stores either don’t want to get sued or many grocery stores don’t know that they should be donating it.” ( Jacobs)

Envision the intriguing aromas and aspects of all the delectable, appetizing, and savory foods the world has to offer. Now imagine those foods being taken, scarcely eaten, and then banished to a life in the trash thereafter, where they cannot be consumed anymore. Now proceed to think about all of the resources, time, effort, and money that goes into producing food, it all would have been for nothing. Discarding edible food leads to billions of dollars of food lost, along with creating additional trash. Consumers can do simple things to create less food waste.

Household waste management is a growing problem in the United States and many other parts of the world. “The U.S. creates a lot of household solid waste per day per person. If there is a huge population of millions of people in a small area, household garbage can easily accumulate to 100,000 pounds per day. A few years ago, residents made a million tons of city waste per year and a billion tons of industrial solid wastes. In 2006, the U.S. residents generated half of 251 tons million tons of municipal solid waste per year and about 8 billion tons of industrial solid waste. This tremendous amount of waste includes both hazardous and nonhazardous waste. (Massawe, et.al, 2014)” A better understanding of household behavior is needed to assist

Solid wastes are any abandoned or discarded materials, thus solid wastes can be liquid, solid, semi-solid or containerized gaseous material. The solid waste contains municipal garbage, waste tires, industrial waste, agricultural refuse, toys and furniture, oil and so on. Normally, The Municipal Solid Waste contains four components, which are recycling, composting, disposal and waste to energy. The biggest issue facing Toronto in the near feature would be the solid waste issue because solid waste would cause pollution, land lacks and health problems. The way to address the waste problem would be collaborating with the government through specific method and program such as invented new technology, increase involvement of public engagement and use of geography information system and mathematic model. There are some evidences show that solid waste would be the serious problem. Toronto’s 2015 Vital Signs Report points that “After increases over three years in the amount of residential waste generated (from 799,812 tonnes in 2011 to 815,450 in 2012 and 823,743 in 2013), 2014 saw a small 2.3% decrease from 2013 (to 804,369 tonnes).”(Toronto Foundation, p158). At the meantime, it seems that Toronto issues are getting worse because it is hard to find landfill site, the rising disposal costs relate to landfill and the way that transport the waste to Michigan would cause high transportation cost.

Existing landfills are running out of space or already full. Brock Township has already will run out of space as of 2013. Landfills in several other municipalities in southern Ontario, particularly around the GTA will fill up by 2021. A big reason for this is that we throw many recyclable materials away. Locally, over seventy five percent of plastics that could be recycled end up in landfills. Ontario is currently behind several provinces in waste diversion. A 2010 report by Ontario’s Auditor General ranked the province sixth in Canada by waste-diversion rate. Industry in Ontario operates the Ontario Electronic Stewardship, a non-profit organization that operates as a regulated recycling program. It manages old, used or end of life electronics and attempts to do so in an environmentally safe and secure way, reclaiming many of the materials for use in other

Canada is a developed nation with most of its citizens living in food security. Most Canadians are able to live in security knowing that they have access and availability to food, others still struggle to get food onto their table. 850, 000 Canadians access a food bank every month when $31 billion dollars worth of food ends up in the landfills (CBC). One of the most valued resources to humans is being wasted instead of consumed. This research essay asks the question: why do Canadians waste their food? This essay will argue that it is people’s behaviour that causes food waste. It will look through two dimensions of food waste from consumer’s behaviour to manufacturing. It is clear to mention that it is not people’s intention to waste but because of their behaviours, food waste is still a major issue that goes on in Canadian society. Globally, one-third (1.3 billion tons), of food produced for human consumption is wasted along the food chain annually (George 3). Canadians waste about 183 kilograms of solid food per person. The solution to food waste is to stop wasting but we must look further about why do Canadians waste. The response to this question would be that Canadians need to reshape their relationship with food and modify their behaviour.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food wastage, “food produced and not eaten,” emits enough greenhouse gasses (GHG) to be ranked third amongst global emitters (FAO 2013, 6). In New York City (NYC) it is estimated that businesses “produce more than 650,000 tons of food waste annually” (Turso 2017). This specific food waste is classified as food scrap, cooked food which is still edible, but no longer useful to the business due to a myriad of reasons. Whatever the reason may be for the company, this tonnage of food has the potential and possibility of being recovered for redistribution to food banks, soup kitchens, and other food rescue organizations. For example, two of the largest organizations in NYC, City Harvest and Food Bank NYC, will collect around 59 million and 24 million pounds in 2017 respectively, of unprocessed/non-perishable food. This is equivalent to about 42 thousand tons or 6.5 percent of annual food waste from scraps. Despite having warehouses, fleets of vehicles, and numerous volunteers, two of the largest organizations barely make an impact on the total amount of food rescued versus food wasted.

American citizens throw away millions of tons of garbage each year, and this trash has to go somewhere. While there are projects underway to clean and reuse this refuse most of it gets dumped into huge landfills. These landfills are disgusting festering blisters on our country's landscape. But people continue to consume and throw away more and more in the name of convenience. As they see it, when things get old, throw it away and get a new one. They blame the government for the trash problem, but the truth blame should be placed on themselves.

A MID SEMESTER REPORT ON AN OVERVIEW OF WASTE MANAGEMENT BY PANDIT HARSH 2010A4PS176U AT Lucy Switchgear FZE Dubai, UAE A Practice School – II station of BITS PILANI, DUBAI CAMPUS Dubai International Academic City, Dubai UAE (AUGUST 2013– JANUARY 2014)