Pennsylvania must focus on reducing waste

Our country has an enormous waste problem. While we make up just 4% percent of the world’s population, the United States generates more than

12% of the planet’s waste. This averages out to 4.9 pounds of trash per person, per day. Nationally, only about a third of our waste is recycled or composted, while the vast majority is sent to landfills where it can contaminate groundwater, incinerators where it can pollute our air, or worse yet: end up littering the environment.

Today is the 25th annual America Recycles Day. We should use this occasion to reckon with our growing waste crisis. While recycling is important, we are not going to recycle our way out of our waste problems. Perhaps we should start by creating an “America Reduces Day.” Of course, this should take place every day, not once a year.

The marks of the waste crisis are staggering: Every 15.5 hours, Americans throw out enough plastic to fill up the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium. Every year, around 16.5 million tons of plastic washes into the world’s oceans. Plastic debris is one of the biggest threats to ocean biodiversity — entangling, poisoning and blocking the digestive tracts of marine animals. In Pennsylvania, toxic microplastics recently were found in 50 of our cleanest and most pristine rivers and streams.

Food waste is another major part of the problem. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimates that 30-40% of the U.S. food supply is wasted. That corresponded to about 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010. Wholesome food that could have helped feed families in need is sent to landfills. We’re wasting land, water and energy to produce, transport, store and ultimately dispose of food that is never eaten.

In total, the stuff that becomes waste in America contributes a whopping 42% of total U.S. global warming pollution. When resource extraction, production, disposal and transportation are taken into account, America’s waste problem significantly exacerbates climate change.

Environment America recently released a report, “Trash in America.” It details steps we need to take to end the waste crisis and achieve a zero-waste economy. First, we need to take aim at single-use plastics. While efforts to ban single-use plastic waste have stalled at the federal level and in Pennsylvania’s Legislature, policies are gaining traction at the local level across the state. Since 2018, more than a dozen Pennsylvania municipalities covering 16% of the state’s population have passed laws to curb single-use plastics such as bags and polystyrene containers. These policies are expected to eliminate over 8.5 million pounds of plastic waste every year, but we need to go further.

The best approach to reducing food loss and waste is not to create excess food in the first place. Food waste can be avoided by improving product development, storage, labeling, cooking methods and shopping practices. For food waste that cannot be eliminated, composting should become common.

Producer responsibility is a key to solving the waste crisis. One major problem is that manufacturers produce millions of tons of wasteful products and packaging, but once we purchase these things the waste becomes our problem. We should require that producers of hard to recycle products take responsibility for the waste created by those products. Producer responsibility laws have been enacted in several states, it’s past time for Pennsylvania to join them.

Companies must also make our stuff easier to repair.

There is a movement to establish “right-to-repair” laws at the state and federal level. These require that companies give us the tools and information we need to repair our stuff, so we don’t have to dispose of an item when some part of it breaks.

With commonsense zerowaste practices, we can move away from a consumptive economy in which products are manufactured, used a few times and destroyed, to a more circular system. We can create a world where we consume less, reuse more, repair what we have and recycle what we no longer need.

One of the first steps we need to take is to set a goal to reach zero waste. Let’s remember the old mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle — and the reason “Reduce” comes first.