Though we may not love thinking about it, trash is as fascinating as it is abundant, with each country — and municipality — on Earth approaching waste management differently.
In Taiwan, garbage trucks play music like ice cream trucks. In Germany, residents are given magazines laying out how to dispose of their trash. In the U.S., we dump our garbage on the sink ... well, not in New York City.
From the surprising, corporate origins of the modern trash can to Baltimore's garbage-eating monster, here are 22 trash facts to store in the landfill between your ears.
1
“NYC's Roosevelt Island doesn't have a need for garbage trucks and weekly trash pick up. Instead there is an automated vacuum collection. Put your garbage into a porthole and it's transported via underground high speed pneumatic tubes to a centralized location where it's finally picked up.”
2
“Japan burns a portion of its garbage and uses the resulting ash in land reclamation. As of 2012 Japan has created over 250 square kilometers (96 square miles) of new land using this method.”
3
“A single landfill in Kentucky takes garbage from states all over the East Coast. Originally planned to take 7,000 tons over its lifetime, it now takes 3,500 tons per day.”
4
“Switzerland has no landfills. 50% of the municipal waste is recycled, 50% is incinerated to produce electricity.”
5
“TIL about Tokyo's incredibly efficient recycling systems. All combustible trash is incinerated, the smoke and gasses cleaned before release, and then the left over ash is used as a replacement for clay in the cement used for construction.”
6
“Living next to a landfill greatly increases your risk of developing all kinds of health issues including tuberculosis.”
7
“Walt Disney invented the modern public trash can. He did this to keep the smell of garbage down at Disney. Previous to this, public trash cans were made of wire mesh, which allowed goop to seep out of the bottom and the smell to escape.”
8
“In Germany, the city weighs your garbage and charges you $4 per kilogram. As a result, people recycle and compost almost everything. You need a permit to throw out furniture (once per year, max). When Germans come here, they are often shocked by our wastefulness.”
9
“We can't just throw all our garbage into a volcano to burn it up because volcanoes are not hot enough to melt the metals in the trash, and most volcanoes don't actually have a lava lake (only 8 of the thousands on Earth).”
10
“Throwing out your garbage in Germany is so complicated that the city sends you a magazine every year with instructions.”
11
“All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side.”
12
“Homer Simpson's idea to fill a mine with other cities' garbage dissuaded a small Canadian town with the exact same idea.”
13
“Fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets.”
14
“Most airports in the U.S. have incinerators that burn most of their waste and garbage. This includes burning roadkill, such as deer, that die on airport property.”
15
“Sewage treatment plants are not currently designed to remove pharmaceutical drugs from water. Nor are the facilities that treat water to make it drinkable. The aquatic life, particularly fish, are shown that estrogen and chemicals that behave like it have a feminizing effect on male fish.”
16
“In-sink garbage disposals were illegal in New York City until 1997, and are still banned in restaurant kitchens.”
17
“There is a community in Cairo, Egypt that collects the trash of the residents of Cairo and recycles upwards of 80% of it. Nicknamed "Garbage City", these mostly Christian residents have been collecting and recycling Cairo's trash for several decades.”
18
“‘Mr. Trash Wheel’, a solar-powered device in Baltimore's Inner Harbor that has removed 160 tons of garbage from the harbor in just under a year.”
19
“Sweden is so good at recycling that, for several years, it has imported garbage from other countries to keep its recycling plants going.”
20
“Garbage trucks in Taiwan use 'Für Elise' to let people know that the garbage pickup is happening, in kind of the same way ice cream trucks use tunes in the U.S. to get people to line up for frozen dessert.”
21
“The plastic garbage bag was invented by three Canadians in 1950.”
22
“Two families fit an entire year's worth of garbage into a 2-liter glass jar each. After the previous Earth Day, they pledged to drastically reduce their garbage output and work toward a zero-waste lifestyle, tracking their progress along the way.”
