If you’re an average American, you produce 4.4. pounds of trash every single day, significantly more than the global average of 2.6 pounds. In a nation of nearly 324 million people, that amounts to more than 700,000 tons of garbage produced daily—enough to fill around 60,000 garbage trucks.
The EPA estimates that Americans generated about 254 million tons of garbage in 2013. That is a shocking amount of waste. Among developed nations, only New Zealand, Ireland, Norway and Switzerland produce more municipal solid waste per capita.
The good news is that the average American also recycles and composts 1.5 pounds of daily garbage. Last year, the U.S. recycling rate hit 34.3 percent, an all-time high. The bad news is that the rest either was incinerated or ended up in a landfill.
But though the U.S. recycling rate has been steadily rising—it was just 6.2 percent 50 years ago—America still lags behind several other developed (and nearly developed) nations, including Italy (36 percent), the United Kingdom (39 percent), South Korea (49 percent), Taiwan (60 percent), Austria (63 percent) and Germany (62 percent).
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of recycling and composting our garbage, and not letting it end up in a landfill. According to the EPA: Recycling and composting prevented 87.2 million tons of material from being disposed in 2013, up from 15 million tons in 1980. Diverting these materials from landfills prevented the release of approximately 186 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the air in 2013—equivalent to taking over 39 million cars off the road for a year.
However, while recycling has become an environmental mantra, it remains somewhat of a contentious issue. New York Times writer John Tierney has been a fierce critic of the practice, writing in 1996 that recycling may be “the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.” Nearly two decades later, he revisited the topic and came to a similar conclusion: “Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill.”
To read the full story, visit http://www.alternet.org/environment/garbage-america-state-rankings-and-tips-reduce-waste.