Let's Talk Trash

Garbage in Our Oceans How did it All End Up There? It is not news that our oceans are filled with garbage and most of that is plastic which takes a long time to decay and it has affected wildlife and even our own lives.  The question is, how did it all get there?  There are many causes to this problem and I will go through those here.   Poor Waste Management Poor waste management is a big contributor to this issue.  Many countries that are poor have few ways of dealing with garbage effectively like we do in the United States.  They simply do not have the infrastructure to deal with all this garbage.  The countries that contribute the most pollution in our oceans are The Philippines, India, Malaysia, and China.  According to viborc.com, this is how much each country contributes to pollution in our oceans in metric tons!     Littering Littering is another big contributor to the large amount of pollution in our oceans.  This is not just som...

Recycling Buildings Deconstruction Back to Construction   I first heard about this method on NPR.  I always assumed that recycling was nearly impossible for buildings unless you are talking about metals or certain plastics.  I never thought about other materials such as shingles, the foundation, walls, and flooring.  In this blog, I will discuss how these materials can be recycled and the process it takes.  I will not go through every single part of the building.  That would take too long.

Food Waste What Can be Done? When I hauled garbage, I would notice a lot of what I had in my trailer was wasted food.  Many of the food came from restaurants since that transfer station dealt with mainly those facilities rather than residential houses.  Why wasn't that food transported to food banks or homeless shelters?  For starters, many food pantries and homeless shelters accept mainly non-perishable items. That was why I saw perishable food in my trailer rather than packaged foods.  Many food banks and homeless shelters lack the means to keep perishable foods fresh.  So, what can be done?  I am going to ignore companies for now and focus on us.  What can we do? Composting This is something we can also do in our homes.  There are many municipal composting sites in many areas.  However, there are downsides to composting such as it can cause allergic reactions and it takes a lot of time to turn food into compost.  This can cause backlo...

What is a Transfer Station?  When I hauled trash, I would get loaded at a transfer station.  I would drive my truck into a tunnel with a hole in the ceiling.  Trash would be dumped in by either a bulldozer, excavator, or both.  Loading could take minutes, depending on the volume of trash.  A transfer station is more commonly called a Material Recycling Facility or MRF.  There is a lot more to transfer stations than just garbage.  A lot of their operations also pertain to recycling.  They are banded together into bales and loaded onto trucks to go to recycling facilities. What are the Benefits to Transfer Stations? The benefits of using a Material Recycling Facility are: Reduction of transportation costs Reduction in greenhouse gases like vehicle exhaust Reduce landfill waste Remove hazardous waste

What's Wrong with Recycling? The System is Broken In 2018 as I was working as a transfer driver, I asked the dispatcher at the transfer station about why we were taking tons of recyclable materials to the landfill a few miles away.  He told me it was because while it was sitting outside for many months getting rained, snowed, and having bird droppings plastered all about it, the recyclables molded and became impossible to recycle.  I then asked how much was there.  He replied, " 37,000 tons "!   To put that into perspective, an eighteen wheeler can legally only weigh 80,000 pounds.  That is 40 tons.  That weighs as much as 925 fully loaded trucks.  It took a couple weeks to get rid of all that garbage and let's not forget the tons of waste already coming in.  Let me reiterate, the system is broken. Why is it broken? You saw in the video above that China used to take a lot of the world's recyclable waste.  Now that has changed.  Bec...

How Does Recycling Work Exactly? Turning Trash into Things We Use I understand the video above is quite silly, however it does point out an important part of the supply chain of waste management.  Not all trash must end up rotting away in landfills.  Many things can be recycled and used once again.  Products like: