Green Clean Junk Removal

Trash Facts

Green Clean Junk Removal Services does a lot of trash removal around Los Angeles. Even for a company that specializes in trash removal we’re constantly amazed by how much trash humans generate. Ever think about it? Here are some trash facts.

This comes from the Clean Air Council:

 

The average American office worker uses about 500 disposable cups every year.

 

Every year, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times.

 

During 2009’s International Coastal Cleanup, the Ocean Conservancy found that plastic bags were the second-most common kind of waste found, at 1 out of ten items picked up and tallied.

 

Over 7 billion pounds of PVC are thrown away in the U.S. each year. Only 18 million pounds of that, about one quarter of 1 percent, is recycled.

 

Chlorine production for PVC uses almost as much energy as the annual output of eight medium-sized nuclear power plants each year.

 

The state of California spends about 25 million dollars sending plastic bags to landfill each year, and another 8.5 million dollars to remove littered bags from streets.

 

Every year, Americans use approximately 1 billion shopping bags, creating 300,000 tons of landfill waste.

 

Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Light breaks them down into smaller and smaller particles that contaminate the soil and water and are expensive and difficult to remove.⁶

 

Less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled each year. Recycling one ton of plastic bags costs $4,000. The recycled product can be sold for $32.⁶

 

When the small particles from photodegraded plastic bags get into the water, they are ingested by filter feeding marine animals. Biotoxins like PCBs that are in the particles are then passed up the food chain, including up to humans.

 

Airports and airlines recycle less than 20 percent of the 425,000 tons of passenger-related waste they produce each year.

 

The estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high.

 

Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, an extra million tons of waste is generated each week.

 

38,000 miles of ribbon are thrown away each year, enough to tie a bow around the Earth.

 

In 2008, Paper and paperboard made up 31% of municipal waste. Plastics were 12%.

 

In 2008, only 23.1% of glass disposed of was recycled, and only 7.1% of plastics and 21.1% of aluminum.

 

About 31% of MSW generated in the US in 2008 was containers and packaging, or 76,760 thousand tons. Only 43.7% of that was recycled.

 

In 2008, the average amount of waste generated by each person in America per day was 4.5 pounds. 1.1 pounds of that was recycled, and .4 pounds, including yard waste, was sent to composting. In total, 24.3% of waste was recycled, 8.9% was composted, and 66.8% was sent to a landfill or incinerated. 

 

The average American employee consumes 2.5 cans of soda each day at work.

 

The beverage industry used 46 percent less packaging in 2006 than in 1990, even with a 24 percent increase in beverage sales in that time.