Waste Diary
Collaborators:
Sam Freeman
Abstract:
In order to measure how much waste I create, the amount of things I threw away in a four day period was recorded. It was discovered that I disposed of 52 waste items in this time period, of which the large majority were paper and plastic (23 and 22, respectively). Furthermore, it was found that if I recycled/reused as much as possible, I could cut the amount of trash that I send to a landfill in half.
Problem:
According to science.howstuffworks.com, Americans generate 4.6 pounds of trash per day per person, or 251 million tons per year, which is almost twice as much trash per person as most other major countries. All of this waste, which is mostly paper, does not just magically disappear; rather, it goes to a landfill. How much waste do I produce and how much does recycling/reusing materials help?
Materials:
Pencil
Paper
Trash
Methods:
1. Record all trash produced in 4 days time (including at least one weekend), excluding food products, etc.
Data:
Collaborators:
Sam Freeman
Abstract:
In order to measure how much waste I create, the amount of things I threw away in a four day period was recorded. It was discovered that I disposed of 52 waste items in this time period, of which the large majority were paper and plastic (23 and 22, respectively). Furthermore, it was found that if I recycled/reused as much as possible, I could cut the amount of trash that I send to a landfill in half.
Problem:
According to science.howstuffworks.com, Americans generate 4.6 pounds of trash per day per person, or 251 million tons per year, which is almost twice as much trash per person as most other major countries. All of this waste, which is mostly paper, does not just magically disappear; rather, it goes to a landfill. How much waste do I produce and how much does recycling/reusing materials help?
Materials:
Pencil
Paper
Trash
Methods:
1. Record all trash produced in 4 days time (including at least one weekend), excluding food products, etc.
Data:
Data Analysis:
The makeup of my trash production is just about what I expected it to be, although I didn't think I would throw away quite as much paper. Also, the general amount of trash I produced was a bit more than I expected. This really shows that the amount of trash we create can build up very quickly. To elaborate, if I continued to dispose of items at the same pace as I did in the four days during the study, I would have thrown away about 412 things in just one month, including 60 aluminum cans, about 52 pieces of notebook paper, and about 38 plastic bags. Trash builds up even faster when more people are taken into account. For example, if all 1,800 students at Heritage High School threw away trash at the same pace as I did during the study for 10 months, we would accumulate a mind-blowing 7,416,000 items of trash. This would include just over 1 million aluminum cans and about 950,000 pieces of notebook paper.
Something to note about the data is that it includes trash from 3 weekday and 1 weekend. The trash recorded on the weekend was much different than the trash recorded on the weekdays (I produced more on weekdays) as my schedule is different then. Although a 3:1 weekday weekend ratio is alright, a 5:2 (5 weekdays and 2 weekends in one week) would be much better and provide more accurate information from which estimates for future trash production could be made. The study could also be extended to about 4 weeks or so to ensure the most accurate information, as this would diminish the influence of days with abnormal amounts of trash production.
Conclusion:
Recycling and reusing things helps decrease the amount of trash that get sent to landfills. If I exclude trash items I can recycle and/or reuse, I only produced 26 pieces of trash during the four days, which is exactly half of what it was before. This really means a lot when one considers the impact over time. To explain, recycling and reusing items makes my yearly trash output about 2,375 items, instead of 4,750, what if would be if I didn't recycle/reuse. Looking at this on a bigger scale - the entire population of Heritage High School, the importance of recycling is even more evident; the school would only produce 3,708,000 items of trash in one school year instead of the original 7,416,000 if appropriate materials were recycled/reused.
Landfills cost a lot of money to build and maintain because of the massive amounts of trash arriving at them every day. People need to collect the trash, bring it to the landfill (the trucks that transport the trash are expensive and require fuel), and then the trash needs to be dealt with at the landfill (composted, recycled, buried in the right place, etc. The bottom line is that it is important to reduce the amount of trash produced and to reduce and reuse appropriate items to prevent landfills from being filled up, as this costs lots of money and is not good for the environment.
Citation:
"How Landfills Work." HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/landfill.htm>.
The makeup of my trash production is just about what I expected it to be, although I didn't think I would throw away quite as much paper. Also, the general amount of trash I produced was a bit more than I expected. This really shows that the amount of trash we create can build up very quickly. To elaborate, if I continued to dispose of items at the same pace as I did in the four days during the study, I would have thrown away about 412 things in just one month, including 60 aluminum cans, about 52 pieces of notebook paper, and about 38 plastic bags. Trash builds up even faster when more people are taken into account. For example, if all 1,800 students at Heritage High School threw away trash at the same pace as I did during the study for 10 months, we would accumulate a mind-blowing 7,416,000 items of trash. This would include just over 1 million aluminum cans and about 950,000 pieces of notebook paper.
Something to note about the data is that it includes trash from 3 weekday and 1 weekend. The trash recorded on the weekend was much different than the trash recorded on the weekdays (I produced more on weekdays) as my schedule is different then. Although a 3:1 weekday weekend ratio is alright, a 5:2 (5 weekdays and 2 weekends in one week) would be much better and provide more accurate information from which estimates for future trash production could be made. The study could also be extended to about 4 weeks or so to ensure the most accurate information, as this would diminish the influence of days with abnormal amounts of trash production.
Conclusion:
Recycling and reusing things helps decrease the amount of trash that get sent to landfills. If I exclude trash items I can recycle and/or reuse, I only produced 26 pieces of trash during the four days, which is exactly half of what it was before. This really means a lot when one considers the impact over time. To explain, recycling and reusing items makes my yearly trash output about 2,375 items, instead of 4,750, what if would be if I didn't recycle/reuse. Looking at this on a bigger scale - the entire population of Heritage High School, the importance of recycling is even more evident; the school would only produce 3,708,000 items of trash in one school year instead of the original 7,416,000 if appropriate materials were recycled/reused.
Landfills cost a lot of money to build and maintain because of the massive amounts of trash arriving at them every day. People need to collect the trash, bring it to the landfill (the trucks that transport the trash are expensive and require fuel), and then the trash needs to be dealt with at the landfill (composted, recycled, buried in the right place, etc. The bottom line is that it is important to reduce the amount of trash produced and to reduce and reuse appropriate items to prevent landfills from being filled up, as this costs lots of money and is not good for the environment.
Citation:
"How Landfills Work." HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/landfill.htm>.