 | Brian Shaw is the owner/operator of Action Hauling. Brian runs the company with the help of his fiance Michelle. Their goal is to help individuals and business’ by cleaning up and properly disposing of junk, debris, and rubbish. You can contact Brian by phone at 316-210-6309. |
Environment
2009-10-01 09:07:00
Times for decomposition to take place
Question: Your article was so informative last month I was curious and wanted to see if you had any information on how long it takes for different products to decompose?
Answer: These are some facts we all need to consider before we put anything in the trash. We should never buy new when we can use what we have for the same purpose.
Garbage or trash is a major form of environment pollution these days. Each person produces about 4.3 pounds of trash a day. Do you know where all your garbage goes? Many types of garbage take hundreds of years to properly decompose when thrown away.
For example a banana peel 2 to 10 days, sugarcane waste takes 30 to 60 days; thread used for sewing decomposes within 3 to 14 months. Cotton decomposes within a month to 5 months. Paper carrying bags could take 2 to 5 months.
A simple rope takes 3 to 14 months, an orange peel will decompose within 6 months, where a cigarette takes anywhere from a year to 12 years.
Not quite as common as they used to be but milk packet (Tetra) covers and cool drink packets decompose in 5 years.
Leather shoes decompose in 25 to 40 years, and our nylon clothes take about 30 to 40 years.
Plastic carry bags decompose in 15 to 1000 years, and aluminum cans decompose in 80 to 100 years. Sanitary napkins and children’s diapers take anywhere from 500 to 800 years for decomposition.
Glass bottles decompose in 1,000,000 years, and here’s a real scary fact, plastic bottles and cans never decompose.
Some other very interesting facts about recycling and trash.
Did you know that …. ?
• The energy we save by recycling one glass bottle is enough to let one light bulb burn for 4 hours
• It takes 90% less energy to recycle aluminum cans than creating new ones
• 84% of all Household trash can be recycled
• Recycling paper needs 64% less energy then creating new paper
• Every ton of paper recycled saves 17 trees
• Every ton of paper recycled saves 7,000 gallons from chemicals
• Every ton of paper recycled saves 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity
• One gallon of motor oil can contaminate 2 million gallons of water
• About 5 million tons of oil ends up in the ocean each year
• Every week it takes 500,000 trees to produce the paper for the ‘Sunday’ Newspapers, only in the US
• It takes 15,000 tons of trash that are buried in the earth to create one job, while recycling this trash creates 9 jobs.
About 90% of the contents of our bins could be reused or recycled. Think twice before throwing trash into dustbin. You can reduce the use of some items, can reuse some of them like paper and cardboard and take some of them (cans, plastic, bottles etc) to the recycle bin.
