Region 8
Recycling and Solid Waste Management
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reducing our resource use and responsibly managing our waste
In 2009, Americans generated about 243 million tons of trash and recycled and composted 82 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 33.8 percent recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.46 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.34 pounds per person per day. This provides an annual benefit of 178 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions reduced, comparable to the annual GHG emissions from almost 33 million passenger vehicles.
View more facts and figures on municipal solid waste in the US here (PDF, 12 pp, 147K).
The most effective way to reduce waste is to not create it in the first place. By reducing and reusing, we can save natural resources, reduce the toxicity of our waste and reduce waste management costs. Recycling turns materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resources. Collecting used bottles, cans, and newspapers for recycling is just the first in a series of steps that generates a host of financial, environmental, and social returns.
Whether you're at home, on the go, in the office, or at school, there are many opportunities to go green by Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling.
What Region 8 is Doing
Waste generation is one of the significant environmental impacts that we have in our daily operations, therefore it is important to quantify the various components of our waste/recycling stream, evaluate the effectiveness of Region 8’s current recycling program, and identify areas for improving both the current and future recycling efforts.
We currently recycle, compost and reuse a wide range of consumer items (PDF, 1 p, 139K).
In October 2009, a volunteer team of Region 8 employees helped capture a snapshot of 24 hours of materials that we generated in our facility by conducting a Waste Audit (PDF, 13 pp, 126K) of trash and recyclables generated by the EPA Region 8 1595 Wynkoop Facility.
Since implementing a composting program here at Wynkoop in May 2010, the amount of waste material diverted from local landfills has increased from 64% to 80%.
Based on our 2010 waste reduction activities we have achieved a GHG Reduction of 447 MTCO2E. This is equivalent to:
- The annual GHG emissions from 81 passenger vehicles.
- 3 acres of standing forest (based on CO2 sequestration per tree).
- Annual emissions from the energy consumption of 40 households (based on annual emissions per household).
- 50,683 gallons of gasoline (based on CO2 emissions per gallon)
- 18,605 propane cylinders used for home barbeques (based on CO2 emissions per pound of propane).
- 153 tons of waste recycled instead of landfilled (based on CO2 emissions per ton of waste landfilled).