Our country has an enormous waste problem. While we make up just 4% percent of the world’s population, the United States generates over 12% of the planet’s waste. This averages out to 4.9 pounds of trash per person, per day. Nationally, only about a third of our waste is recycled or composted, while the vast majority is sent to landfills, incinerators or ends up littering the environment.
This year, the 25th annual America Recycles Day falls on Nov. 15. We should use the occasion to reckon with our growing waste crisis. While recycling is important, we are not going to recycle our way out of our waste problems. Perhaps we should start by creating a new event called “America Reduces Day.” Of course, this should not happen once but rather on all days of the year.
The marks of the waste crisis are staggering: Every 15.5 hours, Americans throw out enough plastic to fill up the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, the country’s largest football stadium. Every year, around 16.5 million tons of plastic washes into the world’s oceans. Plastic debris is one of the biggest threats to ocean biodiversity, entangling, poisoning and blocking the digestive tracts of marine animals.
Food waste is another major part of the problem. The USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates that 30-40% of the U.S. food supply is wasted. That corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010. Thus, wholesome food that could have helped feed families in need is sent to landfills. Additionally, we’re wasting land, water and energy to produce, transport, store and ultimately dispose of food that was never eaten.
In total, the stuff that becomes waste in America contributes 42% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. When resource extraction, production, disposal and transportation are all taken into account, America’s waste problem significantly exacerbates climate change.
PIRG and Environment America have released a report, Trash in America, that details steps we need to take to end the waste crisis and achieve a zero-waste economy. First, we need to take aim at single-use plastics. While efforts to ban single-use plastic waste are stalled at the federal level, policies are gaining traction in states like Maine, Maryland and Vermont. In 2020, New Jersey passed the country’s most comprehensive plastic legislation: the bill banned single-use plastic bags and paper bags at large grocery stores, prohibited polystyrene foam containers at restaurants, and made plastic straws by-request only, beginning in spring 2022. While the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has recently issued some new regulations to curb waste disposal, the state Legislature is lagging behind on bills to ban single use plastics, update the bottle bill, and establish producer responsibility.
The best approach to reducing food loss and waste is not to create excess food in the first place. Food waste can be avoided by improving product development, storage, shopping practices, labeling and cooking methods. For food waste that cannot be eliminated, composting should become commonplace at the municipal and state levels.
Producer responsibility is a key to solving the waste crisis. One major problem is that manufacturers produce tons of wasteful products and packaging, but once we purchase these things the waste becomes our problem. Producers should take responsibility for the waste created by their products’ use. For example, with a bottle bill, the companies that make the beverage containers are responsible for recycling the material.
Another must is making our stuff easier to repair. There is a movement to establish “right-to-repair” laws at the state and federal level. Right to repair policy requires that companies give us the tools and information we need to repair our stuff, so we don’t have to dispose of things when some part of it breaks.
With commonsense zero-waste practices, we can move away from our current consumptive economy where products are manufactured, used a few times and destroyed, to a more circular system. We can create a world where we consume less, reuse more, repair what we have and recycle what we no longer need.
One of the first steps we need to take is to set a goal to reach zero waste. Let’s remember the old mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle — putting the most emphasis on “reduce.”
Janet Domenitz is the executive director of MASSPIRG and MASSPIRG Education Fund.