Earth as an ecosystem: Limited Resources
Waste is, by the very nature of the word, something of a problem. It’s been noted, most recently by Michael Jessen of Canada’s Zero Waste organization, that humans are the only species on the planet that actually produce true waste. To best realize the ultimate dangers of waste, it helps to consider our planet as one finite ecosystem, with a limited amount of resources. For any ecosystem to function sustainably over time, the consumption of resources must produce outputs that are useful for other purposes or for other species. That’s not commentary; it’s basic biology. Humans, however, have over time developed a system of disposable material consumption, demanding an ever-increasing amount of resources and producing waste that doesn’t serve any useful purpose. It’s not a stretch to say, then, that this linear track from resource consumption to waste production is, ultimately, an unsustainable one. Theory aside, there are plenty of clear and immediate problems being caused by human waste, and to better understand these problems is to better realize the importance of finding solutions.
To get a sense of scale, here’s a vital stat: In 2006, Americans produced over 250 million tons of trash. To get personal, this represents an average of 4.6 pounds of trash generated every day by the average American, more than anywhere else in the world. This figure does include, thank goodness, everything thrown out by residents, businesses, and institutions, including materials that can be recycled (more and more of which are diverted into various channels of reuse every year). Still, of these quarter billion tons of trash, 55% winds up in landfills, and another 12.5% gets burned in waste incinerators. Interestingly, as our national waste stream continues to grow, the number of operational landfills in the country is steadily decreasing. In 1988 there were 8,000 active landfills nationwide; in 2006, there were only 1,754. Those that remain are getting bigger and bigger, but are also charging cities more and more in “tipping fees” for the right to dump their tons.
And as local landfills shut down, many cities are forced to ship their waste farther and farther. That’s another weight on municipal budgets: Carting tons of waste doesn’t come cheap, particularly as energy and fuel costs are skyrocketing. From New York City, for instance, trash is routinely shipped to such faraway places as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia. (The silver lining here is that these increased costs are making longer term recycling contracts—like the 20-year deal NYC’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed in 2004—more financially appealing to cities.) But if waste were strictly an economic issue, we probably wouldn’t be talking about it here, and the environmental implications of our trash deserve special attention.
