Throw it Away!

Published by Deborah DeMann in Goin' Green · 29 March 2019

We’ve all heard it and probably said it, “Throw that away!” So, where is “away”? Is it gone? No, it is not. It is in a landfill. There is a total of 2, 547 landfills in the US alone. ¹ Once again, it is discouraging to the point of, it’s so bad I can’t do anything, but we can.

Once a landfill is a landfill, it is done being anything else for our lifetime. It takes from 450 to 1,000 years for a landfill to decompose². That is not “away”. That is our earth, our home; we are poisoning our earth one battery, bulb, piece of plastic, piece of non-natural fiber clothing at a time. Americans only recycle 34.3 percent.

So, what can we do? The easiest thing to do is use less that needs to be thrown out. We talked about single use products such as: Single use plastic grocery bags, single use plastic eating ware, plastic wrap and plastic bags and plastic straws. That’s a huge start. Once you become aware of “I have to throw this away”, you will throw away less. Today, I cancelled my trash pickup. That was nearly 30 dollars a month!

When you starting being conscience of what you are using, you will quickly learn what you can re-use.

Next blog: Energy use

References

1) https://www.epa.gov/lmop/project-and-landfill-data-state

2) https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-to-decompose-2878033

3) Market bags https://www.etsy.com/shop/KnaturalKnitsDesigns/

4) Plastic bags, straws, eating ware, wrap: https://www.shopetee.com/collections/all-collections