Waste Disposal Of The United States

we’re wasteful. In order to find solutions for our trash problem, we must first admit that we are

There are different ways Americans can dispose of the 200 million tons of garbage they generate each year. In the 1930’s people started to use landfills, as opposed to open dumps, which drew insects and vermin, causing disease. Landfills are made by digging holes in the in the ground and filling it with waste products and then capped. The government safeguards landfills, and each landfill is exclusive to the kind of waste it has. This method is controlled and monitored, as is the method of incineration. Incineration is the burning of solid waste products at a temperature of 850 degrees. There are pros and cons to each method.

Municipal solid wastes are leftovers made by the population such as food, plastic bottles, household wares and many more. These items referred by most as “the garage” or “trash”. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2015) In the early 1900’s, incinerators were used to burn waste however by the Mid-20th century, lawmakers enacted the first government regulations in an attempt to address increasing concerns about the environmental impact of unregulated waste management practices. With the first waste management legislation being passed in 1965, brought along the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, thus bringing us into a new world of waste management.(Vault, n.d.)

Americans account for only five percent of the world’s population, but create half of the globe’s solid waste. Americans toss out the equivalent of $165 billion in food each year. All of that time, energy, and freshwater- for nothing. How can the United States, being so small in number, produce so much waste? Brad Plumer from the Washington Post documented a recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council that attempts to track America’s food, from “farm to fork.” Plumer breaks the report down into seven different wasteful places along the American food production line: Farming, post-harvest and packing, processing and distribution, retail and grocery stores, food service and restaurants, households, and disposal.

“We throw out about 254 million tons of solid waste per year in America alone” for comparison that is about 1.27 million average sized blue whales. That is a ton of trash! But, as Americans we do not see all this trash. We barely even touch it. It is all pretty much taken care of for us. So the trash is sort of out of sight out of mind. Let me put this into some

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has been safely storing and disposing radioactive wastes since 1979. The WIPP is located in Carlsbad, New Mexico and could be potentially harmful to future populations. The nuclear waste is held approximately 2,157ft below the Earth’s surface, and within the layers of the Salado Formation. If the WIPP does form into a nuclear and radioactive disposal plant, then we will need to warn future populations about the hazardous waste that will remain in New Mexico for the next ten thousand years. The main goal of creating a solution for this problem would be to protecting the future population of New Mexico and the United States.

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”.

Emelle, Alabama not only holds one of the biggest commercial hazardous-waste landfill in America, but African-Americans make up 90% of the population of the town. A Choctaw Native American reservation in Philadelphia, Mississippi holds a 466-acre hazardous landfill (Wright 532). These statistics have revealed the sensitive boundary between racial and social classes. Specific human factors have driven the need for change in environmental practices, such as growing human population, increased natural resource consumption, and the effluent discharges of manufacturing. This situation has resulted in a significant negative impact on world ecosystems (Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern 1907). What ties both of these critical concerns

The decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals should be affirmed. The state of Eastland’s waste disposal regulation is neither discriminatory nor protectionist. Historically, businesses and professionals know that licensing requirements and authority belong solely to states and local governments. A state government does not violate the commerce clause when it sets licensing requirements for incineration and interment of fetal tissues pursuant to its autonomy and police powers in carrying out local activities that have always been its traditional function to ensure the health and safety of its citizens. Also, a state acts legitimately and fairly when having funded a public facility, with local taxpayers’ money, for

Did you know there is about a million pounds of material in order to provide one average middle-class American family 's needs for one year? In sum, Americans waste or cause to be wasted nearly 1 million pounds of materials per, and did you know that an average person waste is 4.3 pounds per day? Did you also know that the water in the lake and river have about 3 tons?

parties considered fairly in the policy? Why or why not? How could the policy be improved?

While driving by Interstate Waste Services facility at 375 US Highway 1 and 9 in Jersey city, New Jersey, I immediately noticed the poverty surrounding the facility. From my observation I would say the yearly median income in that neighborhood is anywhere between eighteen and twenty-five thousand dollars. With such a low income, it is quickly identified that this was a lower class neighborhood. I also noticed many Hispanics or African Americans outside their homes. In my opinion, I believe the facility is located in a lower class neighborhood because with not much money coming from the people who live near the facility, they know that they wouldn’t be able to do much even if they did not want it there. It also allows them to rent/sell the houses for much lower prices so families who are limited with their spending to buy or rent a house will be able to do so on a budget.

In 1970, when Americans produced 121 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW), three-quarters went directly into landfills, one-fifth was incinerated, and less

Congress passed The Solid Waste Disposal Act in 1965. The Agency of Environmental Safety considered this Act as the primary effort made by federal authority for efficient waste clearance technology. This act controls the dumping material; manage storage and management of solid, both and non-precarious and precarious wastage. It highlights the processes that are environmentally liable to dispose waste at the commercial, municipal, industrial and household levels (Tchobanoglous & Vergara, 2010). This was considered as primary initiative of a chain of systems focusing on resource management and air cleaning (Gerlak, 2005). There have been several major adjustments made to the Act with the reference to Resource Recovery and Conservation Act (1976). The involvement of federal

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.