Recycling is a very important matter, not just to myself, but to the environment. 75% of all waste is recyclable, but as of 2023 around only 32% of municipal solid waste is being recycled. That leaves a difference of 43% of municipal solid waste that can be recycled but is still adding to landfills. With this, did you know that landfills emit toxic gasses like nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, and other particulate matter. All of which contribute to global warming. When you really think about it, by recycling alone we could have reduced that major contribution by 75%, but only got 32%. Which is really good and important in itself, but I think we can get 43% more.

Colorado is the third highest state in reference to tons of waste per person in landfills. In total of all of our landfills, we have 35.2 tons of waste per person currently. Keeping in mind that 1 ton is 2,000 pounds, that is 70,400 lbs per person. While other states like Idaho have 4.1 tons of waste in landfills per person, that is 8,200 lbs.

Now, I understand that it might be difficult to even fathom how we could reduce the amount of waste by that much, but I have noticed a problem with some streets in colorado. Here in Fruita, on mainstreet, we have recycling bins wherever we have trash cans, but other towns like Ouray don’t have a single recycling bin lining their streets. Over this summer I went on a little road trip, with Ouray being our last stop before heading home. Over the couple of days, we had built up a collection of plastic bottles and other recyclables. There we decided that we wanted to empty our collection rather than hauling it back home with us. In total I think we spent about 15 to 30 minutes walking all the way around downtown Ouray looking for a recycling bin. All we found were double sided trash cans at each corner. So I propose that to increase recycling we should place recycling bins wherever there are trash cans on the streets.