Landfill Statistics of General Interest Worldwide
Landfill statistics can be a very dry and not very interesting subject, and they usually apply to a particular area, but to gain an understanding of landfill statistic I am going to give you some estimated statistics from what I know about landfills around the world.
First of all there is the statistic of how much waste each of us produces every year. The average person living in a developed country will produce between a half a tonne and one and a quarter tons of waste a year. That is the weight of the material each of us throws in the bin or “wheely” each year, some of this may be recycled or not.
To think of that landfill statistic really means, just think what a mountain of rubbish this is because each and every one of us is contributing every week. Just imagine for a minute emptying your bin each week for a year into your garden and what you garden would look like! In an average garden this landfill statistic would mean all your plants being smothered by stinking rubbish probably a foot or more deep, each year!
However, this is only a part of the mountain of Municipal Solid Waste we produce, because there is another landfill statistic for the amount of waste we throw away while working whether we work in an office or a factory. In many businesses we throw away between a quarter and a half as much rubbish away while at work as we do once we get home, and that it the commercial waste to landfill statistic!
Factories produce waste (known as industrial waste) which is an even larger quantity and that is reported as the industrial waste to landfill statistic. In fact industrial waste has been quoted as being 6 to 12 times the weight of the products which come out of the factory gate to be sold. Can you imagine for one minute how large this quantity is? It is huge! It includes the ore dug out from mines which contains only a small amount of the metal extracted from it.
It also includes things like the paper not used when for example a circular paper plate is cut from a roll, or a tree is cut into planks and the bark and the pieces of each circular tree trunk which were too narrow to be made into anything useful.
However, industry is becoming much less wasteful and instead of sending off-cuts, and waste stone to landfill or to mine spoil heaps to scare the landscape forever, other uses are being found for these materials. In effect these materials are no longer waste because they are re-used in a variety of ways, and they are “diverted away from landfill”.
So another interesting landfill statistic which is being quoted more often as time goes on is the waste to landfill diversion statistic. In the EU for example, there are targets for waste diversion away from landfill, which means that most of this material must be minimized as waste, re-used, or recycled before, as a last resort, it is allowed to go to landfill.
In the EU the landfill statistic relating to the targets for recycling and diversion are published by the EU and each government, and the amount allowed being allowed to be landfilled drops each year until 2020. Eventually the aim is to stop virtually all organic (rot-able waste) being sent to landfill, and many governments are set to reduce the waste sent to landfill to zero.
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