As the world population increases, so does the demand for products (Tesar 75). When we buy new products we will most likely throw out old ones. In fact, hundreds of millions of tons of garbage are thrown out each year (“Our Pollution” 1 of 1). There are many countries that have trouble with too much garbage. In India and Bangladesh, plastic bags block drain pipes, which makes flooding worse during monsoon season (Dorion 23). In some places, they are running out of room for garbage and must incinerate it. This is an example of how our future could look with too much garbage. Besides the volume of garbage, the non-biodegradable nature of the garbage is another huge problem. The Industrial Revolution first began in Europe in the 1700s, and then swept through the world (Dorion 5). Huge factories and machines were built and people flooded into cities for industrial jobs. This was the beginning of today’s man-made products, which are mostly non-biodegradable (Dorion 5). Garbage produced by these products that is sent to landfills can sometimes take hundreds of years to decompose (Dorion 7). Today the pollution caused by these products is a hazard to places everywhere. People are disposing of garbage in harmful ways. Garbage is sometimes sent to other countries, where native people must dispose of it (Jing 3 of 7). Some places dump their waste into oceans (Jing 2 of 7). When the garbage is dumped into oceans, the water is polluted and kills many marine animals (Tesar 73). As a result the fishing industry is declining and beaches are becoming hazardous for swimmers and boaters. Garbage is also dumped in lakes and rivers from where people get their drinking water. People get sick from diseases such as typhoid and dysentery. While sifting through garbage to sell useful items, they catch illnesses from it because they have no sanitation equipment (Jing 7 of 7). In fact, over five million people die from sickness each year from garbage pollution (Dorion 29). If this problem was solved, then we would not have as many people dying of garbage pollution. Laws have been passed to limit hazardous ways of garbage disposal. But in many countries these laws are not enforced seriously and people and industries continue to dump their wastes illegally (Tesar 73). If these laws were implemented, waterways would be clean and people would not get sick. Today, many governments and organizations are trying to clean up the environment. Agenda 21 was adopted by many countries in 1992. It is a clean up plan that encourages people to reduce, reuse, and recycle. More and more people are using reusable bags and containers and long life bulbs and tires. Recycled aluminum cans and glass are made into new products. Companies are looking into ways to use recyclable materials and reduce the weight and volume of packaging. Offices are recycling paper, saving trees and money. Manufacturers are instituting waste reduction changes, reducing not only trash, but saving in waste disposal costs.
Today garbage pollution is a major problem for people’s health and the world economy, and increasing volumes of garbage is shrinking precious living space. Work should be done to reduce and remove garbage, and enforce garbage removal laws. Governments, industries, organizations and individuals need to come together urgently to stop this mounting crisis and save Mother Earth.
Works Cited
Dorion, Christiane. What if we do nothing? Earth’s Garbage Crisis. Pleasantville: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2007.
Hirshmann, Kris. Pollution. Detroit: Kidhaven Press, 2005.
Jing, Li. “Garbage in, Pollution out”. China Daily. China Daily. 18 Mar. 2010. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-03/18/content_96059997.htm>
“Our Pollution”. Environmental Facts-Pollution. 21 Nov. 2010. <http://www.green-networld.com/facts/pollution.htm>
Tesar, Jenny. Our Fragile Planet: The Waste Crisis. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1991.
Cited: Dorion, Christiane. What if we do nothing? Earth’s Garbage Crisis. Pleasantville: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2007. Hirshmann, Kris. Pollution. Detroit: Kidhaven Press, 2005. Jing, Li. “Garbage in, Pollution out”. China Daily. China Daily. 18 Mar. 2010. 15 Nov. 2010. <http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-03/18/content_96059997.htm> “Our Pollution”. Environmental Facts-Pollution. 21 Nov. 2010. <http://www.green-networld.com/facts/pollution.htm> Tesar, Jenny. Our Fragile Planet: The Waste Crisis. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1991.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
Everyday we throw out the trash we never really stop to contemplate where it all ends up like a landfill, a ship, or even the bottom of the ocean. On September 5th 1986, the Khian Sea was well on it’s way for becoming the World’s Most Unwanted Garbage. The ship had so many toxins, infestations, and many other unpleasants contents that no one would accept it. It must be horrifying and nauseating to even catch a glimpse of what was on the ship also to know they dumped it somewhere not worrying about the consequences is truly despicable.…
- 500 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Since garbage is taken to landfills most people perceive the issues of their trash as out of sight-out of mind type of situation, but the amount of trash currently present on Earth is no big fuss because it would not cover much. In this article the support of this sub claim comes from A. Clark Wiseman of Spokane's Gonzaga University, he discloses “At the current rate, Americans could put all of the trash generated over the next 1,000 years into a landfill 100 yards high and 35 miles square. Or dig a similar-size hole and plant grass on top after it was…
- 512 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash is a non-fictional work written by Edward Humes, in which he demonstrates the effects of waste which human’s have relentlessly produced over the previous decades. In chapter 6, Nerds vs. Nurdles, Humes exhibits the damage that half a century of careless consumption has had on the environment and ecosystems. Our society today has been blind to its surroundings as a product of consumer apathy and does not realize the detrimental effects of our wasting until it is too large a task to resolve. Society neglects to think beyond the extent of the present and the potential consequences and harms materials could bring once we decided that it is no longer beneficial and toss them out. Scientists cannot even begin to predict the approximate amount of plastic nurdles that floats within the ocean. Without any awareness of the amount of trash, it makes the mission of cleaning the ocean impossible. An individual’s never satisfied hunger for the newest technology continually swells the ocean with increasing plastic. Synthetic material is viewed as a necessity for making everyday life easier. Ironically, plastic gradually finds a path back to harm society that appreciates it so greatly. Through bio-magnification, plastic finds a way back to humans through the consumption of seafood; additionally humans ingest chemicals from synthetics which aquatic animals previously consumed. As plastic remains in the oceans it will continually find a path up the food chain, consequently humans will inescapably ingest their own trash through fish and crustaceans which occupy large portions of daily diets. Consumers also avoid the most detrimental aspect of ocean dumping, the result it has on phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that account for virtually 50% of oxygen. By blindly consuming and creating more garbage, civilization is inadvertently suffocating itself. The lacks of concern consumers and producers have for disposal methods are not…
- 1023 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
According to “The Hidden Life of Garbage,” Heather Rogers states, “Today’s garbage graveyards are sequestered, guarded, and veiled.(178)”Rogers claims that the Waste Management Inc. operates its Geological Reclamation Operations and Waste systems (GROW) landfill on a historical river valley in Pennsylvania in which Washington had crossed the Delaware river. At the landfill site, Rogers’ states, “the logic of our society’s unrestrained consuming and wasting quickly unravels. (178)” In addition, Rogers explains “the aptly named GROWS landfill is part of Waste Management Inc’s (WMI) 6000-acre garbage treatment complex, which includes a second landfill, an incinerator, and a state- mandated leaf composting lot.(178)” Perhaps the landfill GROWS is aptly named due to the fact that the landfills have become increasingly larger. Moreover, Rogers stressed that although landfill regulations make them less dangerous, these answers will only be short-term solutions. Altogether Rogers attitude of the situation is that these landfill projects are being kept away from the public eye for a reason, which is to keep us from asking questions. In short, Rogers concludes her article by asking the repressed question, “what if we didn’t have so much trash to get rid of?” We generate a large amount of garbage ourselves, everywhere we go. At my grocery store, trash is being generating by the lack of a proper recycling program, untouched, edible food going to waste, and certain materials not being reused.…
- 1159 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
It is clear that garbage is considered a problem. But pinpointing where the actual, factual and calculable problem lies is often very murky. Millennials seem to be confused or ambiguous to the problem of throw away consumption and we all hear we’re running out of planets every year in the summer. (Hume 2010; King etc. 2006)…
- 1434 Words
- 6 Pages
Best Essays -
Landfills are big contributors to the destruction of the environment. They lead to pollution of water and soil, and produce methane which is a greenhouse gas. The effects of landfills also can include animals or even people being killed, roads being damaged, and annoyances like a lot of noise, stenches, and vermin. According to Conserve Energy Future, “Recycling programs keep 70 tons of waste from being deposited into landfills every year” (No Author Given, 1). Hence, recycling plastic will decrease waste, which in turn will decrease the amount of landfill space needed. If the amount of landfill space decreases, the environment is greatly…
- 772 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Heather Rogers argues in “The Conquest of Garbage” (Kirszner LG, Mandell SR eds. The Blair Reader, 7th ed. 2011) that although waste and garbage have many negative effects on the environment, it is still good for business. Of the many monuments of civilization, the Fresh Kills Landfill is one of them; it is the largest landfill. The United States is the world’s biggest producer of garbage. It is now harder to avoid producing waste and garbage. There are questions about garbage and where it goes that remain unanswered such as: will we run out of places to put garbage? An abundance of garbage means an abundance of decay and filth, and yet waste is a necessary part of the consumer society. Foe every ton of household waste, there are seventy tons of industrial waste. Not only does garbage have a negative effect on the environment, but the way we deal with garbage also has a negative effect on the environment. Since the national set of standards was implemented ten years ago, there are garbage graveyards now that are struggling to meet new standards. There are also landfill gases in addition to landfill liquid waste. Waste incinerators were responsible for producing sixty-nine percent of the worldwide dioxin emissions. Thirty percent of municipal waste is packaging; forty percent is from plastics, though we know that plastics stay intact for centuries. The output of throwaways is still enormous after the introduction of recycling. Most recyclables still end up as garbage. Our consumption of raw materials and our production of waste speed up the destruction of the earth’s natural systems. Global warming is occurring faster than predicted because of the increase in burning fossil fuels. Extreme weather has already occurred as an effect of emissions. Both developed and undeveloped countries have an effect on the environment. Second and third world countries are turning to the use of plastics such as the plastic shopping bags causing an increase in the…
- 397 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
According to www.sciencedaily.com, in 2008 there was so much garbage they had 378,000 volunteers help cleanup garbage. Also garbage causes pollution and climate change and habitat destruction. Each year garbage kills over a million animals. From some garbage wrapping around animals flippers and amputating them. Additionally garbage can cut marine life and create infections. Also ocean currents have been carrying debris into all major oceanic gyres (spiral or vortex) for decades. They recorded a tin entered in the ocean In 1986 and will decompose until 2036. That is why everyone should recycle.…
- 425 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Before this fieldtrip to Lee County Solid Waste Facility, I lacked knowledge regarding the fate of our trash. My idea of a waste facility went along the lines of a big dump site or landfill; contrarily, I am familiar with what items are deemed recyclable in Lee County. My experience at the Lee County Solid Waste Facility, operated by Covanta, showed me how garbage has the potential to provide electrical power to over 250,000 homes. Waste to Energy is a primary example of how America can become more sustainable and produce less heaping landfills. Carrying around a trash bag made me conscientious of how much trash I accumulated.…
- 461 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
There’s always the possibility that the problem is humankind, and the chance that the human race could potentially recognize mistakes, wrongdoings, and backward progress. Moreover, beginning with defining the process of throwing away garbage, simply states that a person gets rid of what they don’t wish to see anymore. Throwing away trash is a quick and effortless way to get trash out of sight. Is easy always the best verdict? Concluding that immeasurable amounts of garbage plague locations, distort humanity, and ravage wildlife; a change is necessary to increase the world’s chance at redemption.…
- 357 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
In 2008, the waste generated more quickly than could be disposed of, was said to be 40% greater than the earth’s available yearly resources (Brown 2009). The earth’s resources and its capacity for absorbing the waste we generate has become environmentally unsustainable. Disposing and recycling of rubbish is now huge international business and although there is great economic value in this for the companies involved the need to find ways to sustain the environment is also a major factor in this process (Brown 2009). Transporting rubbish around the world where it is recycled more cheaply and remanufactured into a usable commodity to be shipped back, highlights the new value of some of our rubbish. Waste plastics, paper, card and glass are now just some of the products collected, recycled and sold for profit. Previously they may have been simply landfilled at not only monetary cost, so of ‘negative value’, but as we are now discovering, great cost to our planet (Brown…
- 1256 Words
- 6 Pages
Good Essays -
7) Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: a Social History of Trash. New York, NY: Henry Holt and, 2000. Print.…
- 3503 Words
- 15 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Recycling is a method that appeared as a solution for the problems that environmentalists were having with landfill’s capacity and contamination of garbage around 1980’s. According to Christopher Douglass (2003), dramatic predictions of landfill closings created a crisis mentality in America. He also informs that the in 1988 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported to Congress that “one-third of all landfills in the United States would close by 1994 and that by 2008 nearly 80 percent of landfills would be shut down” (Douglass, 2003). The situation that the EPA presented to the Congress in 1988 seemed to be disastrous; but fortunately those predictions were all wrong. The problem with these predictions was that the government and environmentalists turned on red lights in order to solve this issue in a positive way that could help the planet’s environment. As a result, state and local…
- 3039 Words
- 13 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Landfills are growing at an exponential rate in the United States; this is a big concern for many people. Many years ago people just threw their garbage in dumps and forgot about it. Then it started to become a problem as the dumps got fuller and just kept growing. People have to put their garbage somewhere; they produce over 4 pounds of garbage everyday per person, that’s about 250 million tons for the country (EPA.gov). The population is growing at a very quick rate also. Some people try to reduce their refuse and waste, but it is very difficult when just about everything we use has some form of waste, and it’s been going up to all time highs. Packaging alone makes up a third of all waste. America has over 3000 landfills that are in use and about 10000 that have been closed (EPA.gov). A vast amount of different ideas and problems come along with landfills and there are many ways to stop them from growing. The pollution associated with landfills is a problem, as well as the massive size of them, and solutions need to be found to stop them from growing.…
- 1821 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
Landfills have been used for centuries and they are quick and easy ways to get rid of garbage and others wastes. In the story “The Hidden Life of Garbage”, Heather Rodgers elaborates on how a company called Waste Management Inc. hides the pollution from the public eye. Rodgers tells how all of the waste is pushed into landfills and how the malodorous and repugnant landfills leak into the soil…
- 661 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays