How would you like to shut down one fifth of all coal-fired power plants in the US?
Turns out, there's an easier way to reduce the equivalent amount of carbon emissions. You probably know what I'm going to say: divert materials out of the wastestream and back into re-use. I was recently told the ReStore has diverted more than 600,000 tons of material from the landfill, so I started hunting the internet for some more information about the environmental benefits of keeping useable materials in circulation.
I read an interesting study written by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance which reports the impact our waste has on the environment.
Americans dump 170 million tons of waste into landfills and incinerators every year. That's enough for a 30' wall around the entire U.S. border. Here's the kicker: we have the technology to cost-effectively recycle, reuse, or compost 90% of what we dump. A zero waste approach would reduce greenhouse gases by about 406 megatons CO2 eq. every year. That reduction per year is the same as shutting down 21% of the nation's 417 coal fired power plants.
This figure is reached by including more than just the environmental benefits of disposing materials in a responsible manner. That just accounts for an annual 2.6% of greenhouse gas emissions.
The study includes the climate change impact of replacing the materials we throw away.
"For every ton of discarded products and materials destroyed by incinerators and landfills, about 71 tons of manufacturing, mining, oil and gas exploration, agricultural, coal combustion, and other discards are produced. More trees must be cut down to make paper. More ore must be mined for metal production. More petroleum must be processed into plastics."
By including this aspect, wasting accounts for 36.7% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. A zero-waste approach is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to protect the climate and environment.
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