Some Trash Facts From Tommy Trash Tracker

Everyone just loves trivia, so thought it would be fun to share some Trash Trivia with our readers, a few facts about the garbage each of us generates.

1.  According to the EPA, the average American discards 4.34 pounds of garbage every day. Over the course of one year, that means the average American discards 1,583 pounds of garbage...multiply that times 300 million of us.

2.  Did you know that the total volume of solid waste produced in the U.S. each year is equal to the weight of more than 5,600 Nimitz Class air craft carriers, 247,000 space shuttles, or 2.3 million Boeing 747 jumbo jets...that is a lot of trash.

3.  (This fact does not include litter, just COLLECTED TRASH.)  Put all of the solid waste collected in the U.S. in a line of garbage trucks and that line of trucks would cross the country, extending from New York City to Los Angeles, more than 100 times...imagine 100 lines of trash trucks from here to Los Angeles.  That would be a line of trash trucks some 1400 feet wide and 2400 miles long.

4.  The 62.6 billion cans recycled last year alone would make 171 circles around the earth at its equator (Aluminum Association).

5.  If we recycled all of the newspapers printed in the U.S. on a typical Sunday, we would save 550,000 trees—or about 26 million trees per year (California Department of Conservation).