{"id":11894,"date":"2012-06-04T13:16:42","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T18:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=11894"},"modified":"2012-06-04T13:16:49","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T18:16:49","slug":"how-americas-trash-became-a-worldwide-problem-an-interview-with-garbology-author-edward-humes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/06\/04\/how-americas-trash-became-a-worldwide-problem-an-interview-with-garbology-author-edward-humes\/","title":{"rendered":"How America’s Trash Became a Worldwide Problem: An Interview with Garbology Author Edward Humes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by George Frey\/Getty Images<\/p>

Americans produce over seven pounds of trash per day, per person.<\/p><\/div>\n

Did you know that America\u2019s number one export is … garbage? Edward Humes<\/a>, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of twelve books (and a former Austinite), examines this and other disquieting facts about American trash culture\u2014literal<\/em> trash culture, not the other kind\u2014in his new book, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash<\/a>.<\/em> Americans, while making up only five percent of the world\u2019s population, produce almost a quarter of its garbage, much of which ends up in landfills and the ocean.<\/p>\n

Humes took some time to talk to StateImpact Texas about why the United States produces so much waste, and why he thinks it just doesn\u2019t make a whole lot of sense.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>So how much trash do Americans produce in a given day?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Well, it turns out that this is not an easy number to come by. In fact, the \u201cnational trash bible<\/a>\u201d \u2013 the publication that the EPA puts out to examine our municipal \u2013 is really badly outdated. Research done by Columbia University and a trade journal called BioCycle shows that we produce, per day, 7.1 pounds of trash for every man, woman, and child in the country<\/a>. And that compares not-favorably with the rest of the world \u2013 the average Japanese person produces about 2.5 pounds of trash. But it doesn\u2019t even compare favorably to where we were a few decades ago. It\u2019s about twice as much per capita trash as we produced in 1960. Where is it all coming from? What more do we have now that we didn\u2019t have then? Those are the interesting questions. Are we more prosperous now than we were in 1960? Do we feel more prosperous because we have all this crap we\u2019re throwing away?<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Texas counties have, on average, over 40 years of landfill reserve capacity. We even have 3 landfills with over 2,000 years of space. So why aren\u2019t landfills a sustainable option?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>America has no shortage of space to dig another hole and throw our trash into. We\u2019re a big country. But just because we have the space to throw stuff in yet another hole — for the next thousand years if we want to — doesn\u2019t make it a sustainable option. It\u2019s unproductive to take material that has value and bury it in the ground and make an environmental problem out of it. Even the best-run landfills are degrading our environment both through their potential to seep downward \u2013 liquids and toxins \u2013 and the emissions they put into the air. Principally methane, but also carbon dioxide, which actually makes them a greater greenhouse gas generator than a modern waste energy plant which was one of the surprising things I learned in the course of working on this book.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Austin, Texas has recently voted to implement a plastic bag ban\u2026<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>This idea is catching on like crazy. Los Angeles is among the largest cities to adopt one of these bag ordinances. It\u2019s modeled after one that Los Angeles County does, which has been in effect now for over a year. The way it works is that plastic grocery bags are banned from major grocery retailers and convenient stores and such \u2013 but you can buy a paper bag for ten cents apiece. The idea is to encourage people to bring reusable bags. But the paper bag option is still available as kind of a compromise. What they\u2019ve found in Los Angeles County after a year is that it\u2019s pretty much a 90% adoption rate. People bring their own bags to the store now. One year has dramatically changed their behavior. It\u2019s worked out pretty well here.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Austin and Travis County in Texas have committed to a goal of zero waste. The goal is to reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills by 90 percent by the year 2040. What do you think of a zero-waste initiative? Is it a realistic goal?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Yay, Austin! I think this is a goal that is imminently doable. I think zero-waste is a goal that can never be fully achieved because there is always going to be some <\/em>waste. But having that sort of goal is tremendously important. Walmart, in the space of four years, reduced their waste to landfills by 80%. If Walmart can do it, I\u2019m quite sure Austin and Travis County can at least match that.<\/p>\n

Walmart is taking stuff they used to throw away, they\u2019re recycling it, they\u2019re composting it, then they\u2019re selling the compost in their stores. They are making buying decisions on the front end that have less packaging and therefore less waste. They have literally turned waste from a cost into a source of revenue for the entire company. And is there any reason why other large-scale enterprises like a city or a county aren\u2019t doing the same thing? No. They should be doing the same thing. It\u2019s the only fiscally responsible thing to do.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a pocketbook issue. That\u2019s what people haven\u2019t fully grasped. That\u2019s why I talk about waste and thrift. You could be the biggest climate skeptic, anti-green person, pro-fracking, you name it… and still get on board with the idea of as vigorous a waste-reduction program as possible. Because it makes economic sense to do so, because it will save us all money. And it does have the ancillary effect of also being an environmentally-friendly thing to do. But that doesn\u2019t even have to be the main driving force. It\u2019s one of the few environmental areas that doesn\u2019t have to be a partisan thing.<\/p>\n

Lily Primeaux is an intern with StateImpact Texas.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know that America\u2019s number one export is … garbage? Edward Humes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of twelve books (and a former Austinite), examines this and other disquieting facts about American trash culture\u2014literal trash culture, not the other kind\u2014in his new book, Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash. Americans, while making up only five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":11898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11894"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11901,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11894\/revisions\/11901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}