Solid Waste Education: What Happens to your

Garbage

What can we do to help manage our output of waste and its harm?

By educating people on the process waste goes through after it is

discarded and the realities of the process, people will care more
about the process and help to improve it!

The Beginning
You dispose of your trash. Whether you haul it yourself or utilize a garbage truck service, it
ends up in one of the Knox County Convenience Centers. It is then sorted into recyclables and
waste headed for the landfill.

Recyclables
Clean, non-contaminated paper and
cardboard are fed into fast moving water
to form new pulp to make paper and
cardboard. Contaminated items head to
the landfill.
Aluminum cans are crushed, cleaned, and
shredded, and sent to an aluminum
manufacturing center.
Glass is cleaned, sorted by thickness and
color, then crushed, grinded and melted
into new glass.
Plastic that is not too thin, and is not
contaminated is remelted into plastic
pellets to be made into plastic again.
Local Landfills
In TN, there are four classifications of
landfills.
Class I Landfills: everything under the
sun except what is toxic; more stringent
regulations
Class II Landfills: all of Class I but
without household waste
Class III Landfills: farming,
landscaping, construction wastes
Class IV Landfills: construction wastes
and shredded tires
If some of the waste can be safely
incinerated of to reduce mass, it will be.

BY CATHERINE MORAN

Exportation and "Recycling" of Goods

Much of the United States used to export the recycling of goods to foreign countries
like China. Recently ,legislation about what plastics and substances will be
accepted by China has become much stricter. This has led to increased exportation
of plastic and potential recyclable waste to other Southeast Asian countries. These
countries miss handle the waste 70% of the time, and much of it ends up in the
ocean and nature.

Inside of the Oceans

Because the waste is improperly disposed of in these Southeast
Asian countries, they often end up floating out into the middle of
the sea. Large portions of these pieces of plastic will be drawn
together out in to the top of the open ocean. This has led to
formations like the Pacific Garbage Patch, which is twice the size
of Texas with all of the plastic that it contains.

Inside of Us
Every human alive now contains some amount of micro plastics
within them. The majority of the animals that live on land do, and
also the majority of fish. Sadly, the deeper you go onto the ocean,
the higher presence of micro plastics you will find in animals. The
This can lead to medical conditions in humans and death in
animals.

BY CATHERINE MORAN