Waste, post-hasty

kiligirl (66)in #waste • 5 years ago

Turns out this World Bank Year in Review report is inspiring somewhat of a series (see the growing list at the end of this post), so as the end of 2018 ticks ever nearer, let me close out with a few charming and sobering thoughts on waste - and yes, in a quick post, because we're supposed to be celebrating 2019's arrival, not thinking about garbage.

gif source

Besides Oscar the Grouch and people working in the solid waste management business, we can safely say the number among us who "Love traaaash" is miniscule.

Waste highlights from the World Bank's Year in Review

The fundamental message about waste in this report is that waste is a big, big problem and it's terribly managed pretty much everywhere except high and upper-middle income countries. That sends a further signal that perhaps adequate waste management is considered a luxury compared to say, defense budgets and procurement of kickback-rich stuff (like Zambia's 42 US$1million fire engines, but I digress).

Graph time!

Let me start with the good news from this picture. Do you see Recycling sitting at 13.5%? That has to be an increase from where it was sitting ten years ago. Unfortunately, Open dump is still the way most waste is handled.

Let's throw some numbers at that to get an idea of scale

I'm such a rabbit-hole jumper that I couldn't resist checking out the source for this sobering message, so (yes, even though this was supposed to be a quick post) I clicked on the link for that graph to get a breakdown on their findings. I won't share it all today, because it's New Year's Eve! However, looking at plastic alone, the What a Waste 2.0 report notes that globally 242 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated, constituting 12% of all municipal solid waste. Of the floating marine debris, around 90% is plastic, of which almost 62% is food and beverage packaging.

What are the implications of that?

Globally, solid waste contributes to climate change, and we've all seen how it's collecting in our oceans, along beaches and along inland waterways. Single use plastic - bottles, bags and the like - is a serious health hazard to marine life. We've probably all seen the heart-wrenching video of the sea tortoise with a plastic straw stuck up its nose, or seen the images of dead sea mammals and birds whose digestive systems are so clogged with plastic there's no room for food in them, so they wash up on beaches starved to death.

We are really lucky in our little suburb

As I've mentioned in a previous post, our municipality provides a curbside recycling service. This morning I put out two large bags of recycling and two tiny garbage bags representing the previous week's waste. I'd estimate that the volume of recycling was probably 5-6 times that of the regular garbage. One of the reasons our municipality cares is our landfills are all full and there's nowhere to put new ones - so they have to make another plan. At least we have a municipality that takes an interest in finding a solution and makes it easy for people to participate.