Trash or garbage is a major form of environmental pollutant, with many types taking hundreds of years to properly decompose when thrown away. The truth is shocking, yet it’s something we can all try and do something about. Here are 10 facts about trash to consider, plus some practical tips for ways of reducing your garbage, recycling it and helping the environment.

1. On average, American’s throw away about 3.5 pounds of trash each day.

2. Between Thanksgiving and the New Year, Americans throw up to 25% more trash, amounting to a massive five million tons extra. Of this, about four millions tons is believed to be made up of wrapping paper and shopping bags.

3. One third of all garbage thrown away by Americans is packaging. As lots of packaging takes years to fully decompose, it’s worth making the effort to try and cut down on the amount of packaging and bags you use.

4. Different types of rubbish take varying amounts of time to properly decompose. Top of the offenders are Styrofoam and plastic containers which take one million years to fully decompose. A disposable (spot the irony in the name) diaper takes 550 years and an aluminium can takes between 200-500 years. At the other end of the scale, a wool sock takes one year and a paper bag one month to decompose.

5. Estimates suggest that the average American office worker uses up to 500 disposable coffee cups each year.

6. About 200 million gallons of used motor oil is illegally dumped in the US each year.

7. Unwanted junk mail is frequently thrown away and up to 44% is ditched without even being opened.

8. We use more than 67 million tons of paper each year – which works out as about 580 pounds per person.

9. A large amount of garbage is either incinerated or buried in landfills. About a quarter is currently recycled, but if we were more careful and spent time sorting and separating different types of materials, we could significantly increase our recycling abilities.

10. The time taken for glass to break down isn’t known. However, as we’re still finding pieces of glass made over 3000 years ago, we can only assume it’s a long time!

Practical tips for reducing trash and helping the environment

Use ceramic mugs or cups and instead of plastic or Styrofoam cups.

Recycle your junk mail or get off the lists, by contacting the Direct Marketing Association.

Think about packaging – do you really need to put your fruit and vegetables in plastic bags? Recycle supermarket bags and take your own when you go shopping.

Take used motor oil to special Hazardous Waste facilities.

Cut down on wrapping paper by reusing gift bags or buying recycled gift wrap.

Reuse cardboard boxes.

Recycle aluminium cans – we’re doing well on this, as it’s one of America’s most recycled products.

Save on paper. Print on the back of printer paper, cut up used envelopes to make scrap paper and buy recycled paper. Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, three cubic yards of landfill space and 4,000 kilowatts of energy.

Think before you chuck your old mobile phone away. Mobiles contain substances that can be very dangerous, so look out for mobile collection schemes instead.

Estimates suggest that up to 90% of the contents of our bins could actually be reused or recycled. Have a look in your bin – what could you reuse (e.g. paper or cardboard) and what could you recycle? (e.g. plastic, cans, tins or bottles).

Don’t ignore the issue of trash – get creative and do something positive for the environment!

By Rachel Newcombe