Composting Statistics

Municipal Solid Waste also known as "Garbage" consists for the average American of everyday items such as newspaper, food scraps, metals, plastics, clothing, personal hygiene tools, etc. What we don't realize is that a lot of the waste that we collect, at least 30-70% of the total waste could either be composted or recycled! Making more public opportunities for people to have the possibility to compost in various common locations (work, schools, homes, corporations) would increase the amount of composting occurs within the year. 


The United States EPA (Environmental Protective Agency) writes a report every year on the amount of waste total cultivated by Americans. In 2010, people,just like you, on average generated approximately 4.43 pounds of trash per day  and only recycled on average 1.51 pounds making that an average of only 34.1%. It's safe to say that a lot more individual effort needs to be accounted for in our recycling and composting habits. 


In the graphs below, I used the amount of waste generation total from the years 1960-2010 and graphed the amount actually recycled from that total material. What this line graph shows is that every year average Americans are progressively recycling more waste but generating more waste as well! Both of these variables are directly proportional to one another. 

The only way to change this stifling data set is to be more conscious about the amount of waste generated daily and how much of this waste is being recycled and composted! It's important to reuse materials again if at all possible especially since there has been a consistent increase of population size in the US. 

Remember, if everyone does there part, that's the only way that positive CHANGE can occur!

COMPOST TODAY!