Background Response 1: How Long Does Litter Take To Disintegrate?

These facts are awful. A million years for glass bottles and styrofoam to disintegrate? That is unbelievable. I knew it was a long time, but this is way longer than i thought. People should take this into consideration when they are buying products. Instead of buying styrofoam cups buy ones been made from recycled paper. Also think of how many times you get things in the mail that have styrofoam packaging in with them. I know that it happens a lot and often times half of it isn't even needed. Alternatives to items made of styrofoam might be looked into too. Aluminum takes 200-500 years to disintegrate. While this is not quite a million years it's still a lot and could be avoided by recycling.
The most amount of litter found outdoors is fast food waste. While at first this is surprising, I realized that this actually make sense. Most of the trash by the side of the road is from fast food, which also provokes the question whether its the people who eat fast food are the ones that litter and don't recycle the most. 28% of the trash that is found is aluminum. If the energy saved from recycling one aluminum soda can can power a computer for three hours, as i learned in the last article, then this 28% would have a huge impact on the amount of energy saved. If only people took the time to put those cans into a recycling bin, then we would save just that much more energy, and therefore have use less fuels to create the energy.

Background Article 1: How Long Does Litter Take To Disintegrate?

"Types of Litter Found Outdoors:
Fast food waste (33%)
Paper (29%)
Aluminum (28%)
Glass (6%)
Plastic (2%)
Other (2%) "

"How Long Litter Lasts In The Wild:
Orange peel (2-5 weeks)
Paper bag (1 month)
Cigarette butt (up to 5 years)
Leather shoe (45 years)
Plastic bottle (430 years)
Aluminum can (200-500 years)
Disposable diaper (550 years)
Glass bottle (Approx. 1 million years)
Styrofoam container (1 million years)"

Response 3: American Waste Land

These facts are horrifying for me to hear how much Americans waste. 251 million tons is a lot of garbage! And 30 million tons of food is enough to feed many, many people. I am doing sustainable fuel for my actual isearch, but I also want to look into the amount of waste that is produced not only in the world, but specifically in America. I have personally experienced many times when I've been shocked by the things that people waste. Waste of electricity and recyclable things is not only bad for the environment, but it also has large impacts on the levels of fuels in the world.
The quotes "...the energy conserved from recycling one glass bottle can power a 100-watt light bulb for four hours." and "The energy saved from recycling a single soda can is enough to power a computer for three hours!" are a real eye opener to the amount of energy that can be saved by such a simple act of recycling something. For the most part people don't recycle because they are either too lazy or there isn't a recycling bin available at the moment. This needs to change in America specifically. Only 32.61 percent of all trash produced in America is recycled. That's not very much at all when you think about it. If all this trash keeps building up well have other problems to worry about besides an energy crisis. The point is that we can save not only energy, but in doing that reduce our waste.