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Waste is all that stuff we buy and don't use up. It's the leftover packaging like pop cartons, cereal boxes, and juice boxes. It's the trash that remains after industry creates a product. Or it's the old stuff we just can't use anymore, like old tires. We put all this trash in landfills (garbage dumps) that use up thousands of acres of land. We burn (incinerate) it, and we even ship it to 
other parts of the world. Every year in the U.S. we throw away 50 million pounds of toothbrushes and that's just a tiny part of all the trash we create. For example, in Florida, if every visitor and business in the state chose to dump their trash at the beach rather than in trash cans, in one year the pile would measure 5' high, 100' wide, and would cover the entire length of Florida's coastline.
We create municipal (community/household) trash, agricultural (farming) trash, industrial (factory )trash and mining (like coal, gold, or iron ore mining) trash. There's trash you haven't thought of!! We're running out of places to put it. No one wants it in his or her backyard. Do you?
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 One kind of trash that's really bad for you, animals, and the entire Earth, is called "Hazardous Waste". That means that it is poisonous or toxic. Toxicants are in products that you buy every day at the store. Just because products are sold at the store does not mean they are safe! Many of these toxic products we don't really need. When you go shopping, think about what safe products you might use. There are lots of them available now. What begins in your shopping cart as a pile of cleaning supplies, pest-control products, certain paints, or even preservative-treated wood can end up in a toxic waste site. And sometimes the factories that made these products become toxic waste sites as well. Read the labels and you'll see why! Study this entire KSE News to learn ways you can help the Earth solve this dirty problem. There are thousands of toxic waste sites in the U.S. and they might be making us sick. |
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