Aluminum Can—Eighty to 200 Years
According to the Container Recycling Institute, we sent 55 billion aluminum cans to the landfills in 2004, an amount that has increased by 760 percent since 1972.
Cigarette Butt—One to Five Years
The Ocean Conservancy found that during coastal cleanups, cigarette filters and butts were the number one source of litter. While certainly they’re better off in a landfill than underfoot at the shore, their composition makes them particularly resistant to breakdown both in nature and in a landfill. Though the filters look like cotton, almost all are made of cellulose acetate, which is slow to degrade.
Newspaper—Two to Four Weeks or Longer
Paper, including newspaper, seems like one of those items that although recyclable, would also break down quite nicely when mixed in a landfill. Theoretically it can, but because microbial decomposition is so stifled in landfills, paper takes much longer to decompose there than under normal conditions. Or so discovered William Rathje, a professor of archeology at the University of Arizona, who started the Garbage Project—digging through landfills to find clues about consumer behavior. While there, his team found legible newspapers more than fifteen years old, indicating decomposition in landfills doesn’t occur as it would in a compost heap. They also discovered that newspapers made up the largest single item by weight and volume in the landfills studied.
Apple Core—One to Two Months or Longer
If tossed in a composting bin or outside, an apple core might take weeks or months to break down. However, the Garbage Project discovered easily identifiable food and yard waste that were years old. They estimate that food in landfills does degrade, but at a very slow rate—about 50 percent every twenty years. Even yard waste, by definition biodegradable, was found intact years later.
So what does it all matter if stuff stays in landfills indefinitely? Limited space, for one thing—finding a suitable spot for a landfill can be difficult, especially since they are a classic case of NIMBY (Not in My Backyard). Though they can be covered and made into something else—both John F. Kennedy and La Guardia Airports were built on landfills—the process is long and fairly expensive. Perhaps most importantly, reducing the amount of stuff we consume, reusing what we already have, and of course, recycling, doesn’t just mean less trash, it also means less primary resources—oil, trees, water, etc.—that have to be used in the first place. But while most of us are familiar with recycling programs, the EPA estimates that the bulk of our garbage is made up of items that can be recycled or composted—40 percent of it is paper, 17 percent is yard waste, 8 percent is plastics, and 7 percent is food waste. Seems like something ain’t working. Perhaps to be truly effective, recycling won’t just mean more places to put your beer bottles, it’ll mean making the trash can the alternative, rather than the norm.
(Photo source: dirtymouse, jonk, tantrum_dan, and ansleystaton on flickr (cc)
