Urban Home*A*Syst - Managing Household Trash Waste

You can reduce the amount of household trash you produce in many ways, and you have several alternatives to dispose of the trash you do create. This chapter helps you examine your current waste disposal practices and how they may affect air and water quality in and outside of your home. You will learn about:

As the U.S. population increases, the amount of trash produced each year also rises. Not only are there more people in our community, but also each person is producing more waste than in the past. In Fayetteville, in 1993 the total solid waste produced was 25,600 tons. By 1997 this figure had risen to 33,700 tons produced. This is an increase of 8,000 tons in only a few years!

Use the following assessment to identify areas where you can cut down on waste, keep waste out of landfills and improve your management of the waste you do produce. Mark your waste potential level (low, medium or high) in the column on the right. Although some choices may not correspond exactly to your situation, choose the response that best fits.

	Low Waste	Medium Waste	High Waste	Your Waste
Packaging	Usually select packaging that minimizes waste.	Sometimes consider packaging when selecting products.	Never consider packaging that minimizes waste.	High Medium Low
Recyclability of packaging	Regularly purchase containers / packaging that can be recycled.	Sometimes consider recyclability when making purchase.	Never consider recyclability.	High Medium Low
Quantities purchased	Only purchase what is needed; avoid accumulating unused products. Give away extras.	Sometimes buy more product than I can use, occasionally give away excess.	Often purchase more product than I can use. Throw away all leftovers.	High Medium Low
Product durability and reuse potential	Products selected based on durability, ease of repair and potential for reuse.	Sometimes select products based on durability, ease of repair and reusability.	Never consider durability, ease or repair or reuse.	High Medium Low
Composting	All yard wastes and kitchen vegetable scraps composed at home, or in a city composting program.	Some yard or kitchen wastes composted.	No composting of any kind.	High Medium Low
Reuse and recycling	Reuse or recycle as many household wastes as possible.	Reuse or recycling done when convenient.	No reuse or recycling.	High Medium Low
Product disposal	Would never dump any trash illegally. Nothing sent down the drain that should not be.	Some small amounts of products dumped down storm drain. Never dump solid waste.	Use the storm drain or vacant lot for disposal of unwanted products for convenience.	High Medium Low

If you rated as “medium” or “high” potential in any area, read on in this section to find helpful information on how to reduce your risk. If you rated only “low” waste potential, Congratulations! Keep up the good work.

Landfills are the destination of most of our trash. But because of growing public concern about landfill location and stricter disposal regulations, landfill space is becoming scarce. As a result, garbage has become a major environmental and economic issue for consumers and municipalities. The good news is that these problems have caused Americans to look for new ways to deal with their trash. Producing less waste, reusing, recycling and composting not only saves taxpayer dollars, but these practices protect air and water quality, and the health of people and wildlife.

If you don’t produce trash, you won’t need to get rid of it. It’s that simple. Since we all generate at least some trash, we need to think about ways to make less. Part 1 helps you figure out how to cut the amount of waste you produce and prevent some kinds of waste completely.

To have your name eliminated from additional lists, you can write to the three major credit-reporting agencies listed below. Request that your name be removed from their direct-marketing files.

You make purchasing decisions every day, and each purchase involves a certain amount of waste. Whether you buy groceries, toys, furniture or appliances, your selections determine the type and volume of waste that you must someday discard. But if you buy with the environment in mind – you will select products that produce a minimum of waste. Precycling and enviroshopping are terms that refer to this kind of purchasing. The following questions are ones typically asked by an enviroshopper before a purchase is made.

How much do I need? Among other things, enviroshopping means buying only what you need. A good price or bulk package may tempt you to buy a larger amount of product than you really need. But what may seem like a “good deal” often ends up wasting your money because eventually you may throw away the unused or spoiled product. Make sure you can use what you buy, or know someone who can use the leftovers.

Buy locally. In addition to supporting the local economy, you may be able to save money and buy products that may be fresher and have less packaging. Vegetables purchased at U-Pick fields and at vegetable markets and stands come with minimum packaging. Local products may not be boxed and crated. It’s a win-win deal for you, the local economy and the landfill.

Are my purchases long-lasting and reusable? Look for products that can be fixed when broken. Products and materials that can be reused—passed along or used for other purposes—save money and conserve resources. In a world with increasing numbers of ”disposable” and single-use products, it is a challenge to avoid waste when shopping.

Is the product package recyclable? Many product containers and packaging materials are potentially recyclable: glass bottles, plastic bottles and bags and cardboard boxes.

To promote recycling, many manufacturers use the international chasing-arrows “recyclable material” symbol.

But be careful: the symbol only means the product is made from materials which are suitable for recycling. If it cannot be recycled locally, then the product package is not truly recyclable where you live. The list of materials that your local program will accept probably changes over time, so you need to keep up to date. If you can’t recycle locally, you might be able to take some of your recyclables to a neighboring community that will accept them.

Is the product or its packaging made from recycled materials? A surprising variety of products are made from recycled material: carpets, car stops, wood planks and picnic tables. Once materials are recycled, they will be made into new products or packaging only if there is a market for them.

As a consumer, you can use your buying power to support and encourage markets for recycled-material products. This is sometimes called “closing the loop” — when you recycle and buy recycled. Each year, for example, billions of aluminum cans are melted down and made into new cans. On product packaging, look for the words “made from recycled materials,” and-especially for “made from post-consumer recycled materials.”

Recyclable material means the container or package is potentially recyclable. Recycled Material means the container or package has been produced – at least in part – from recycled material.

Even though our purchasing habits may reduce the amount of trash we generate, we will never be fully waste free. With this in mind we should now consider that once we create waste, it has to go somewhere. The following section reviews three ways to keep materials out of the landfill. For each item of trash, there are three questions to ask:

Your first objective should be reuse, because it typically causes the least amount of environmental impact.

Sharing old clothes and used furniture is a common form of reuse. If you can’t share with friends or family, try to donate usable items to programs like Goodwill, The Salvation Army or thrift shops. Holding a neighborhood yard sale or taking clothes to a consignment shop are good ways to get rid of unwanted possessions and make a little money. You can usually find uses for more materials than you realize. Give your packaging foam “peanuts” to a local gift shop, for example, or see if neighbors can use your excess paint, lumber or empty plastic pails. Try listing available materials on a postcard and posting it on a community bulletin board. Remember the expression “One person’s junk is another’s treasure.” Often reuse is limited only by the imagination.

Even though recycling is a good idea, it still requires the input of energy and other resources, and produces waste and pollution. For empty glass bottles to be recycled into new bottles, for example, they must be collected, sorted, crushed and trucked to a glass factory, where they are washed, melted and re-formed into new bottles. The new bottles are then trucked to the beverage company to be filled.

Studies have shown that more than half of all household wastes are recyclable. Remember to keep current about what your recycling program will accept. Plastic milk jugs, for example, are usually recyclable, but wax coated paper milk cartons can be recycled only in a few areas. A growing number of programs require recycling by law. You should not limit recycling to typical grocery-store bought materials such as aluminum cans, cardboard, glass bottles and cans. There may be local scrap dealers or industrial salvage yards that want your broken appliances, junk vehicles, wood wastes, other metals, doors, windows and so on. Many localities now require you to recycle large appliances, car batteries, used motor oil and other recoverable materials.

Yard and food wastes typically make up 10-25 percent of the wastes going into landfills. Many landfills across the country have banned yard waste from disposal because of its large volume.

Composting, or “nature’s recycling,” is a much more effective way to handle organic waste (leaves, grass clippings, fruit and vegetable waste). As an alternative to landfill disposal, many communities have established yard-waste compost programs with convenient drop-off sites or curbside pick-up.

Composting may be an attractive method of waste disposal for more people as the “pay as you throw” plan is used in Fayetteville.

Composting is a natural process which turns kitchen and garden wastes (with the help of microbes, earthworms and fungi) into a high-quality soil conditioner.

Many common materials can be composted in your own backyard: leaves, grass clippings, plant trimmings, straw, kitchen scraps (but not animal wastes like fat or bones), manure and even paper.

The final product is a dark brown, crumbly compost that has a clean, earthy scent. It can be spread on lawns or mixed with garden soil as an excellent natural fertilizer.

To compost at home there are many compact and efficient recycling bins on the market, or you can build your own. For kitchen scraps, you might even try worm-composting. With a box of red wrigglers indoors you can compost kitchen vegetable wastes year round. It may sound a bit odd, but worm-composting is a clean, good smelling and efficient way to get rid of food scraps — and it’s educational, too.

In this area there is a new resource for those who are interested in learning to compost at home. A new group of volunteers is available to answer questions about getting started in the composting process. This group is called the “Master Composters.” This is a program which is sponsored by the Cooperative Extension Service, University of Arkansas.

To get in contact with one of these volunteers, contact the local Cooperative Extension Service at 444-1755.

A composting demonstration facility is located at the Extension Service office at 2536 N. McConnell Ave. in Fayetteville. This facility will allow people to drop by and see for themselves how composting can work for them to reduce their amount of waste produced while enhancing the soil in their lawns or gardens.

Disposing of household trash by dumping is widely practiced, but can pose threats to your health and the environment. Although many areas have used this disposal methods for decades, local and state laws are becoming more restrictive.

New laws designed to eliminate illegal dumping now make it possible for an offender to be fined or sentenced to jail time if just one piece of evidence that they were involved is found at the scene of the illegal dump. One piece of trash found in an illegal dump with your name on it could cost you $1,000.

Trash dumped on your property is not only unsightly, it may contain harmful chemicals that can leach out and contaminate groundwater, or be spread by wind and rain. Discarded paint, for example, may contain lead or mercury. If not properly rinsed, pesticide containers contain toxic residue, and used oil filters usually have petroleum products and harmful metals. These pollutants can soak into the soil, pollute well water, and find their way into nearby lakes or streams. If your garbage contains hazardous substances—even in small quantities—they can cause problems. Illegal dumps can also be harmful to wildlife.

By reading product labels, you can generally tell which ones have hazardous ingredients. Look for words such as DANGER, FLAMMABLE, POISON or FATAL IF SWALLOWED.

These are clues that a hazardous substance is present and that careful disposal is required—especially if unused portions of the product are in liquid form.

Although dry chemicals can be hazardous, liquids can more easily injure waste haulers. This is important to remember because the waste you leave bagged on the curb will be handled by another person!

Hazardous liquids in your garbage can react with other discarded chemicals to start fires or create deadly gases. These can be very harmful to the people handling the garbage after it leaves your house. They can also be harmful to the equipment used to handle your waste. Damage to waste handling equipment can be very expensive to taxpayers. The best approach for dealing with these products is use them up so you have nothing left to discard.

Especially for homes served by street drains and storm sewers, any solid or liquid wastes exposed to the weather—including pet wastes—can wash directly into lakes and steams. Storm drains in Fayetteville, remember, are not connected to the waste-water treatment facility.

Even with the best plans for purchasing and reuse, we all must dispose of potentially hazardous materials at times. When this happens, take advantage of the hazardous household waste roundups and permanent hazardous waste facilities. This will ensure that your waste will not be harmful to others, yourself or the environment.

This chapter was written by Shirley Niemeyer, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Kathleen Parrott, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Michael P. Vogel, Montana State University Cooperative Extension; Marie Hammer and Susam W. Williams, University of Florida Cooperative Extension Service; and Wende Cade, Florida Home*A*Syst. It was adapted for Urban Home*A*Syst by John Gunsaulis, Washington County Cooperative Extension Service, University of Arkansas.

Pictures of chickens, flowers, wheat, a boy looking through a magnifying glass, irrigation pipe, soybean pods, and fruits and vegetables.	Cooperative Extension Service





Cooperative Extension Service	Agricultural Experiment Station
Search \| Publications \| Jobs \| Personnel Directory \| Links County Offices \| Departments

Washington County Urban Home*A*Syst Managing Household Trash Waste Prevention, Reuse, Recycling and Composting

Washington County
Urban HomeASyst
Managing Household Trash Waste
Prevention, Reuse, Recycling and Composting