Landfill Leaks

Whenever someone brings up the topic of landfills, I automatically picture a bunch of Pixar's little Wall-e robots stacking cubes of trash to the height of sky scrapers. I didn't realize until now that the height of the landfill isn't nearly as dangerous as the stuff leaking out from it.

Scarboro Landfill in Maryland is a landfill that is constantly leaking leachate (a liquid run off from organic garbage) into a creek and into the surrounding water table. This stuff can be extremely poisonous and possibly cause death. For more info go to http://www.stopthedump.net/index.html

Did You Know...? A Few Recycling Statistics

The article referenced briefly for this post can be found here this time.

Did you know that an average person makes 4.5 pounds of trash a day? That adds up to 1.5 tons of waste a year.

When you make 1.5 tons of waste a year, how much can that add up to in your lifetime? Right now, it seems to be roughly 28.5 tons for just me. You can do the math to figure out my age from that, or I can just tell you: I'm only 19 right now. I haven't even been 19 for half a year, so I might not have reached that 28.5 ton mark yet...or maybe I have?

Here's a question: does that average of 4.5 pounds of trash a day include all the plastic diapers of the world?

Another fact from the greenwaste article: it's estimated by the EPA that about 75% of our waste can be recycled...but only around 30% of it actually gets recycled.

If we're not recycling what can be recycled, what good does that do us in the long run? Those of us who do recycle are trying to help save Mother Earth because she can't do it alone...but those of us who don't recycle are dragging her back.

A few small steps forward? The Recyclers. A giant leap backwards? Yeah, that's the rest of us.

Until recently, I didn't do much recycling. I started doing just a bit when I got to college and saw the aluminum can and plastic bottle bins everywhere. And then I started doing some research--you've seen some of it, if you've looked at older posts. I realized that The Recycling Movement starts with us. Not just me, or Jessica, or Kayli (the other founders of the blog), but with all of us. Everyone can make a difference.

Just think: 55 billion aluminum cans went into landfills, or in the ditch, or were burned in 2004. The sad part? That's 9 million more than in 2000. Four years, 9 million cans. What's that number up to now?

"This is enough cans to fill the Empire State Building twenty times."

"The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years."

"Although recycling is the most common method of plastic waste pollution prevention, less than one percent of all plastics products are recycled in the U.S."


I think that says enough.

This is The Recycling Movement. I've never been greener--in more ways than one. I'm new at this whole shebang. Blogging, recycling...to use the gamer terminology, I'm a nOOb. But at least I'm willing to take that step.

It starts with me.

It starts with you.

It starts with us.

Trees, Trees Everywhere

We all know what a tree is right? I should hope so. We also all know that trees absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. This is all old news right?

Wrong.

There is nothing that is old news about trees. They get taken for granted so often it's not even funny. On the site www.treesaregood.com, I found some very interesting facts:

Did you know...

• A tree can cool a building by almost 20 degrees in the summertime. Way to decrease your air conditioning bill!
• Trees prevent erosion. Their roots hold the soil in place while they gain nourishment from it. By preventing erosion, the trees allow us to have more stable ground upon which we can build, plant crops, and do any number of different things.
• One tree produces nearly 260 pounds of oxygen each year. That's a lot of oxygen people! To put it in perspective a human consumes an overage of about 5 pounds of oxygen per day according to the internet (which as you probably know by now isn't always true but in this case I believe that it's a fair estimate)

I certainly didn't know any of those things but it just goes to show that trees aren't just pretty decor. They're a really important part of our day to day lives. If there weren't trees where would we be? Producing oxygen and reducing carbon dioxide would definitely be trickier. The world would probably be warmer and more soil would erode every time it precipitated or the tide went in and out. NOT a world I want to live in. So respect the trees and don't forget how much they do for you every day. 

I conclude with the immortal words of Dr. Suess in The Lorax " I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues." Though the Lorax I am not, I still would speak out against the unnecessary removal of trees from the world. With every tree that is cut down, we decrease all those wonderful things that they do for us. So the next time you sit down beneath a tree on a hot summer day, you might try saying thank you or singing it a song (plants grow better when spoken or sung to) as a way of showing your appreciation to this little praised species that does so much.

What is E-Waste?

What is e-waste, exactly, and why is it such a problem?

Well, let me ask you this: where does your old TV go when you throw it out? Your computer? That iPhone 4 you just got last year but don't need now because you've got the iPhone 5? Do you think to use your old electronics in another room of the house, or give them to someone who would use it?

And then let me ask you this: do you recycle any of your electronics?

To be completely honest with you, I've never recycled an electronic because I never knew where I needed to go and, under my parents' roof, the only thing that ever gets recycled are aluminum cans because we can get some money off of them. Tell me that isn't greedy or selfish--"I'm only recycling this because I'm getting paid for it."

It's true that a lot of us need the money, and that's fine, but just because we don't have someone coming to pick up our recyclables doesn't mean we shouldn't recycle.

So then, let's get back to the point: what is e-waste?

E-waste is a term used to describe all of those old electronics that you get rid of when you get the newest version, or an upgrade of any sort. The castaways, if you will. And that's not all; electronic waste is the fastest growing type of waste, with 20 to 50 million tons produced worldwide a year, according to an article entitled "Environmental and Human Exposure to Persistent Halogenated Compounds Derived from E-Waste in China".

According to Trey Granger in "E-Waste: What's in this Stuff?" on earth911.com (article found here), as of 2009, 70% of the toxic materials found in landfills were e-waste related.

As Granger's article title asks, "what's in this stuff?"

Well...let's list a few things, shall we?

• Lead
• lead can cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous system, seizures, retardation, hypertension (high blood pressure), the kidneys, liver, and can hinder child development
• Mercury
• can be found in some batteries; mercury damages the central nervous system and the endocrine system as well as being harmful to the mouth, teeth, and gums. Exposure to mercury can hinder the neurological development of unborn children.
• Cadmium
• found in batteries; cadmium has the potential to be carcinogenic. Repeated exposure will cause damage to the lungs, kidney, and liver
• Beryllium
• exposure to beryllium can be carcinogenic for the lungs and lead to Acute or Chronic Beryllium Disease
• disease caused by inhalation of beryllium dust; potentially causes scarring in the lungs and a few symptoms include fatigue and loss of appetite
• Arsenic and antimony
• arsenic damages the digestive tract; antimony is similar and is fatal in large doses

(This information was found here).

When your electronics go into landfills, these toxic chemicals find their way into the soil and sometimes into the water. And from there...where does it go? 

If you're one of the people that always think "that would never happen to me", just think about all the other people that it could happen to, the people who could somehow come into contact with these toxic chemicals because of soil or water contamination in landfills, and then think of how you could help them by properly disposing of your old electronics.

If you want to know more, or want a relevant story, check out this CBS article about a town in China called Guiyu, which receives illegally imported electronics to recycle them. Guiyu has the highest levels of carcinogenic dioxins in the world because of the methods used, and seven out of ten children have too much lead in their bloodstreams.

Like I said earlier, I've never recycled an electronic device before, but after researching e-waste, I think it's time to start.

Reasons I should replace Styrofoam items...?

This time I'm referencing greenliving.lovetoknow.com, in the article found here.

How many of you know what polystyrene is?

One...two? More of you? I, for one, didn't know a thing about it until I started looking up the detrimental effects of Styrofoam. So I'll enlighten you:

• According to the article, Styrofoam is the trade name for polystyrene, and polystyrene is a petroleum-based plastic.
• One of the main parts in the process of manufacturing polystyrene is the exposure to styrene, which has been classified as a possible human carcinogen. 
• Styrene is often used in the production of plastics, rubbers, and resins.
• The production of petroleum, which is essential in the production of Styrofoam, is a cause of pollution and petroleum is a non-sustainable resource. 
• Not only is Styrofoam forever, as the last post briefly discusses, but it is lightweight and can float. Thus, it is now a large portion of marine debris along coastlines and in other parts of the waterways.
• Styrofoam doesn't break down by exposure to light, but merely breaks into smaller pieces.

With these few facts in mind, think of the food you bring home in your take-out boxes from your favorite restaurant. It's usually a Styrofoam box, right? And think of that coffee that gets chilly in your Styrofoam cup at work. You don't think twice about it: you pop that meal or that cup of coffee in the microwave.

Even without heat, some of the chemicals in Styrofoam products can leak out into the food that comes in contact with it, and when you heat it up the effects only grow. This can be harmful to your health and even to the reproductive system.

So, next time you want to just take your takeout out of the fridge and heat it up in the microwave, just think about it for a minute and put it on a real plate. Start taking a mug to work, or even a reusable coffee cup. I know Styrofoam keeps in the heat or keeps the drink cold, but think about the environment and about your own health.

And again, I'll emphasize the fact that it's so much cheaper to get reusable items and just wash them. A few minutes a day is all it takes, guys.

Save the earth, one less Styrofoam item at a time.

"Styrofoam is forever, essentially."

The article of reference for this post about styrofoam is another treehugger article, found here.

Styrofoam is forever.

Forever.

Think about it...mull it over...that's a long time, isn't it? That's a long time for this substance, which doesn't even biodegrade, according to the article, to sit in our landfills. While all the perishable items around it, like scraps of food, disintegrate and disperse back into the ground, these little white chunks of styrofoam remain.

A little bit of dry humor in this article that I rather enjoyed was this:

To paraphrase Woody Allen, if one of the layers of hell is reserved for the person who invented aluminum siding, then the inventor of styrofoam must occupy several layers of hell all by himself (Portland, Maine School District Bans Styrofoam Trays).

This stuff never goes away. It's just like the plastic bottles...but maybe it's worse?

Portland, Maine has at least made the first step in the right direction where this is concerned - they've banned the use of Styrofoam trays in their schools. Who's going to be the next one to take up the ball that they've sent rolling...or will everyone else just disregard it?

Get Styrofoam out of the schools, the workplace, the restaurants, and for Heaven's sake, get it out of your homes. Move to reusable coffee mugs and actual plates. Water is cheap - remember, two liters a day is only fifty cents a year - so just use real plates and wash them afterwards.

Our lives are too much about what's convenient these days, and the earth is starting to reflect that.

The wonderful world of...tap water?

Did you know, aside from the fact that buying plastic water bottles is more convenient, it's also much more expensive? Sure, you look at your utility bill and decide that you shouldn't use as much electricity or run as much water. Bottled water, then, is surely the way to go...right?

Wrong.

The same article referenced in the last post, the treehugger.com article (which can be found here), also mentions that bottled water is 1000 times more expensive than tap water. So your utility bill is high this month - with those two 24-packs of bottled water, your groceries cost you anywhere from 3-8 dollars more than they needed to...and that's just a rough estimate.

Get this: drinking 2 liters of tap water every single day only costs you about fifty cents over a year.

Fifty cents.

Now think of all that money you're wasting on plastic bottles that just go into a landfill when you could just as easily buy a filter for your faucet or a Brita pitcher for the same price as a few weeks of water bottles. Or, if you're a brave one...how about just drinking tap water straight from the tap? I tend to do that, anyway.

And when you take a sip of that tap water you've always shunned...just think about all the money you'll save over your lifetime by making that one little switch from plastic bottles to the washable glasses in your kitchen cabinet.

Yeah, I went there.

Plastic bottles take HOW long to degrade...?

The purpose of The Recycling Movement is to bring to light not only those boring facts that everyone already knows about recycling, but to also make people aware of other facts and why recycling is a very important concept.

For one thing, did you know that it takes 450 years for a single plastic bottle to break down, and sometimes up to 1000 years? Just one plastic bottle...and it won't even fully degrade in our lifetimes. Take into account that, according to an article on treehugger.com, the United States alone uses 1500 plastic bottles per second. If you take that by 60, you have the whopping number of 90000 plastic bottles a minute. Need I go on? And of the 50 billion bottles purchased a year, about 80% still end up in landfills.

What's 40 billion plastic bottles by 450-1000 years...?

I'll let you do the math.

The idea is recycle your recyclables. They won't degrade naturally, so save the earth the trouble and reuse them.

Plastic bottles aren't our only problems, either.

Want to know more? Keep posted.