solid waste: the throwaway society “waste not, want not.” -benjamin franklin
TRANSCRIPT
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Solid Waste: The Throwaway Society
“Waste not, want not.”-Benjamin Franklin
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Every year, Americans throw away 10 billion tons of solid waste.
Solid waste is any discarded material that is not a liquid or gas.
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Many products are now designed to be used once and then thrown away.
Partly as a result of this, the amount of waste thrown away each year has more than doubled since the 1960s.
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A biodegradable material is a material that can be broken down by living things into simpler substances.
Products made from natural materials are biodegradable.
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Plastics are non-biodegradable.
They can take more than 400 years to decompose.
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Municipal Solid Waste is the trash produced by households and businesses.
Paper is a large part of this waste.
Overall, it is only 2% of the nation’s waste.
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Where does our trash go?
Landfills are waste-disposal sites where wastes are put in the ground and covered each day with a layer of dirt, plastic, or both.
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One problem with landfills is leachate.
Leachate is water that contains toxic chemicals.
Think of it as a slush containing, pesticides, detergents and battery acid.
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Incinerators reduce the amount of solid waste sent to landfills by burning waste.
Some incinerators use the heat produced to generate steam which powers a generator.
However, the waste still must go somewhere. Where does it go?