Add Up Your Waste

What Is Waste?

Waste or rubbish is what we throw away because we no longer need it or have any use for it. All of us create waste or rubbish in almost everything we do including at school, at home and at work, and this is increasing year after year.

The average family throws away approximately 1 tonne of rubbish a year which is the equivalent to the weight of a car. With 51,000 households in South Lakeland that would be some traffic jam!

Look at the diagram below to show the different kinds of waste we throw in our bins.

There are two types of waste; biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. Biodegradable waste , for example paper and food break down naturally in the environment and eventually disappear whereas, non-biodegradable waste, for example drinks cans and plastic bottles do not break down naturally in the environment; it takes about 450 years just for one plastic bottle to break down in the ground!

There are many reasons why we need to take care of the waste we create and why it is important to reduce, reuse and recycle.

When we throw something away the resources and energy which have been used to make the product has been lost and cannot be replaced. We cannot keep on using these resources as eventually they are going to run out!

If we continue to create more waste it will not only use up more natural resources and energy, but it will also increase pollution.

What happens to our waste?

Landfills and Incineration

A lot of the waste we produce ends up in landfill sites which are large holes in the ground that are filled with rubbish. The area of a landfill site is about 5 times the area of a school. Over a period of time the landfill site will have so much rubbish that the hole will be full up and all of the materials in the site will be buried and no longer of use. Biodegradation of waste on landfill sites releases gases that can cause global warming and acid rain which are harmful to the environment.

In certain areas the waste is burned (known as incineration), usually in built up areas where there is no space for landfills. Once the materials like paper and organic waste have been burnt they cannot be reused or recycled.