Society Cost Of Trash

Coming into this holiday season, trash cans will be overflowing with one use items such as wrapping paper, bows, broken toys and ornaments. All of those toys and gifts come immersed in non-biodegradable plastic. Meanwhile cities and counties and taxpayers will continue to complain about the cost of their garbage collections continuing to rise. The cost of garbage, trash and illegal dumping is huge to cities, counties and states and all that gets transferred down to the taxpayer.

CNBC had an interesting article on The Real Cost of Managing Societies Trash: Challenges arise every day as society tosses out more and more wastes, the number of landfills available for use continues to decline, regulations grow and the cost of providing services increases. Financially and logistically, the management of solid waste is becoming ever more difficult.

Let’s first look at the challenge we face … you and I (and everyone else we know) toss out about 4.6 pounds of waste each day. That may not seem like much until you consider that there are about 310 million people living in the United States. All of a sudden, that tiny 4.6 pounds per person per day just grew to a massive 1.4 billion pounds of waste! More amazingly (maybe even scary) is that fact that tomorrow, society will toss away another 1.4 billion pounds of waste.

Let me ask all those complainers that are upset about the price of garbage, what are they doing about it? Are they taking personal steps to eliminate their own amount of trash? Are they using less and asking their friends and neighbors to use less? The reality is the price will continue to increase as gas goes up (because we Americans are not reducing our dependence on oil) as landfills fill up and increased labor costs.

Well this year instead of useless gifts and no packaging, I opted to give the gift of sight to needy in my families names. No paper, using recycled Xmas cards and email. Guess what, no waste, no wrapping paper, no bows, and my trash can is empty.

Think about it.