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Did you know that every person throws away an average 4.5 pounds of trash every day? Than means just one person generates more than 1,600 pounds of garbage in one year! Do the math – that is a huge amount of trash just in the United States!
The Waste-Stream –
So what happens to your trash when it leaves your hands? There are four possible waste-streams, or any combination of the four: 1 – Landfill
2 – Compost
3 – Waste-to-Energy (WTE)
4 – Recycle
LANDFILL is the least desirable, although modern day engineering and science makes this option environmentally acceptable when compared to days of old, when trash was simply dumped in a hole in the ground. That practice is why the term “dump” became synonymous with Landfill, although they are NOT the same. In fact, dumping is the same thing as littering, which is illegal.
From the SP Recycling Education Kitchen, here is a general recipe for building your own landfill. Know that building techniques differ from one geographic location to another. Enjoy this trashy endeavor!
Luscious Layered Landfill - ingredients needed for 30 people building landfills:
30 Large Cups (16 oz) for landfills 30 medium Cups for drinking water roll paper towels for neatness
3 Packages of Oreos 30 whole cookies, crush the rest
2 Boxes of Cinnamon Graham Crackers Crush all
60 Fruit Roll-ups (the sheets, not strips) 2 per person
Several Jars of Peanuts
30 Twizzlers (black) Cut in thirds
2 Boxes Vanilla Wafers Crush
2 Large/Institutional cans Chocolate Pudding Add crushed M&M’S
1-2 Large Bags of M&M’s. Crush and add to pudding
1 Large Box of Grape Nuts Cereal
2 Boxes of Reese’s Cereal Crush
Green Food Coloring Mix into whipped topping
2-3 Large Tubs of Whipped Topping Mix with green food coloring
The cup represents the months of permitting, payment and excavation to create the appropriate depth of the landfill, based on the aquifer and other geographic requirements. Place a single Oreo-cookie in the cup as the base of the landfill. Add crushed graham crackers, representing the loose sand/soil upon which the landfill liner, fruit-roll-up, is placed and seeded to make sure there is no leakage. The peanuts are then added as rocks to support the leachate pipes, or twizzlers. Place 2 twizzlers crisscrossed on the peanuts and one up the side of the cup. Add the crushed vanilla wafers, or the dirt to absorb the leachate and other trash oozing. Now, it is time to add the Class 1 or MSW (municipal solid waste) itself – the pudding and M&M’s. Landfill is now full and time to close it up. Add the two cereals as basic soil and structure support; then, add the topsoil, which is the crushed Oreos. Plant the grass. Add the green colored whipped topping and, now the landfill is sealed and ready for its next function – a pleasurable resource for human-kind!
Another method of waste management is COMPOSTING. This method is as old as the earth itself and is the natural decomposition of organics, such as our raw foods. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t “stink” and works quickly providing rich soil in which to start the gardening process all over again. It is Mother Nature’s Original Recycling Recipe!
You can buy and build all kinds of composters, but all you really need is a small hold in the ground, loose dirt and a good tool to stir your ingredients. These ingredients can include egg shells, coffee grinds, tea leaves and raw foods.
Some communities take their household waste (MSW) minus recyclable products, to a WASTE-TO-ENERGY plant, where it is burned in a highly controlled process which converts trash into electricity. This process reduces the amount of material buried in a landfill by 65-75%, and the material buried is ash. WTE is yet another form of recycling that also provides energy for our use.
Everyone Everywhere Should RECYCLE! We can recycle our most used items: newspapers and paper, cardboard, plastic bottles and bags, aluminum and steel cans, batteries and electronic waste. Recycling is the best-care practice we can adopt for living on our Green Planet Earth!
SP Recycling wants YOUR newspaper and paper because we supply two paper-mills with your old newspaper (ONP), so more newspaper can be made! Did you know that your newspaper today could be processed at the mill and be someone else’s newspaper in just a few days!?!
You, too, can make your own recycled paper – another recipe from the SP Recycling Education Kitchen.
Enjoy and be creative, experimenting with different types of paper, glitter, confetti, dried flowers, food dye for color and herbs and fragrance!
How to Make the Paper– ingredients
Old newspaper, mail, printer paper (avoid paper with a coating like magazine papers)
large bowl, warm water, blender, kitchen towel, screen* to strain the pulp
(*attach wire mesh or strong netting to a frame the size of the paper you want to make, and small enough to fit in your bowl)
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Shred or tear the paper to half fill your blender
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Add warm water to the top and blend until smooth
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Put contents into a bowl and mix with more warm water (amount of water effects thickness of paper)
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Dip the screen into the bowl so that the pulp collects evenly across the screen’s surface
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Let the water drain away and pat excess with kitchen towel
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Press another piece of kitchen towel against the pulp sheet and carefully peel away from the screen
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Allow to dry and then remove from the paper towel
**information compiled from industry data and recipes remembered and shared with and by passionate earth educators
Go Green and $$ GET GREEN $$
By recycling with SP Recycling
Newspaper, Magazines, Catalogs, White Office Paper, Shredded Paper!
