On Waste

We are fortunate to live in a country of abundance. We have extensive water assets, widespread forests, vast fertile agricultural lands and many God-given natural resources. We are blessed, a country of plenty. But we also have become a country of excessive waste. Maybe not the most wasteful country in the world, but certainly far more wasteful than we can be or should be.

Just consider food. We discard well over 100 billion pounds of food each year; that’s between 35-40% of total food production. This discarded food has been produced occupying large tracts of land, consuming vast quantities of water and incurring the high cost of transportation and handling. Much of this waste goes into landfills that release methane gas into the atmosphere, a gas that is a contributor to global warming 34 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. The labeled shelf life on products compels us to discard large quantities deemed unsafe. There seems to be scarce labeling standards, or explanations as to why a product becomes unsafe from one day to the next. Restaurants typically serve us more food than we can or should eat. Today, over 33% of U.S. population is considered obese, with a BMI (Body Mass Index) of over 30, exacerbating our wellbeing and overloading our health care services. And obesity is steadily increasing, having risen 26% since 2008.

Consider paper: While contributing only about 10% of our overall waste, paper is derived mainly from trees. Trees are essential to the conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen, to preserving biodiversity and controlling soil erosion. We are destroying our trees at an alarming rate. Every year, worldwide, we lose about 25 million acres of forests.  Close to 70 million trees are cut down in America each year to produce paper products.  I often receive invoices on four 8 x 10 inch sheets of paper when one would suffice, (and why is “this page left intentionally blank”). Also included is a return envelope although the bill is always paid by direct deposit.  We often receive small items in cardboard boxes many times larger than needed. Much of this is due to the removal of human judgement from such decisions. Sometimes it’s just cheaper for a company to be wasteful. Happily, our recycling rate for paper is about 68% and for corrugated cardboard about 91% (2021), and most fortunately, we do have a robust reforestation rate in the U.S.

Consider plastic products:  Worldwide some 400 million tons of plastic waste is generated every year and no more than 10% is recycled. According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S.’s share of this wastage is about 40 million tons. By far the largest contributors to this egregious waste are Asian countries. However, we are also affected by the action of others. Over 8 million tons of plastic debris end up in oceans each year, a detriment to marine life and to fish consumers. Plastic bottles can take up to 400 years to biodegrade, plastic bags over 50 years.

Switzerland has one of the highest municipal waste volumes in the world but has one of the best programs for waste management. It has a strict policy that “the polluter pays” and recycles over 90% of its glass and cans. Burying municipal waste in landfills was discontinued in 2000. Discarded food is composted for fertilizer. Non-recyclable solid waste is incinerated for energy. 

There must be a lesson here somewhere for the rest of us.

–       – – – Just the view of a common man.