Municipal Solid Waste

Municipal Solid Waste, the trash and recycling created by families and businesses in cities and towns, presents a large and growing problem. Every year more trash is thrown away per person, which raises the need and cost of trash collection, creating more pollution. New York City alone generates enough trash every day to fill Giants Stadium. Because of this, it would be impossible to skip a single day's collection.

Disposal of this trash is a growing problem. Most landfills are at or near capacity, and it is difficult and expensive to open new landfills. Incineration is also expensive and is increasingly subject to tighter air pollution control regulations for mercury and other hazardous smokestack emissions. Recycling and composting initiatives are on the rise, but have far to go.

So what can we do now to make a difference? There are many things we can do as individuals and as a society to reduce the amount of material we consume and waste we generate; reuse products and containers; and recycle and compost as much waste material as we can. There are also many innovations and ideas on alternatives to traditional disposal of non-recyclable, non-compostable materials in landfills or incinerators. BigBelly is the perfect example of innovation at work.

The BigBelly system automatically compacts trash down to a fraction of its original volume, packing 5 trash cans worth into a single receptacle. That avoids 4 out of every 5 collection trips on average, saving time, money and fuel. This also means less diesel soot in the neighborhood and less CO2 warming the planet. BigBelly is the only trash receptacle that yields a return on investment and ongoing savings. That's because the BigBelly does a lot of the work normally done by large trucks. And, BigBelly does that work automatically, using free, silent solar power.

Get details on the environmental and economic benefits of the BigBelly system.

Does compaction at the point of disposal hurt landfill decomposition? Is that bad for the environment? No. Replacing a regular trash can with a compacting one makes no difference once the trash ends up in a landfill. Trash trucks compact waste, and after trash is piled up on a landfill, the operators spend a lot of time and money using heavy specialized equipment to pack it down tightly to maximize space utilization in the landfill. There is a lot written about how one can dig down in a landfill and read a newspaper from decades ago, because there is not enough oxygen or water to aid decomposition, but that has to do with the nature of landfills, not with the type of trash receptacle used at the beginning of the collection process. Whether a bag of trash came from a BigBelly or a 55-gallon barrel at a beach, once it's in the landfill it's all packed to the same degree. But the trash from the BigBelly machines took only 1 truck trip to get it there, versus 5 truck trips for the regular old cans. Over time, let's hope that we develop better ways to reduce the amount of raw material we consume and throw away - by implementing the "reduce, reuse, recycle" goals well. But let's not wait for future innovations to solve all our problems - let's take advantage of available solutions today.

Facts on trash and how the problem is piling up

  • Lots of trash: The average American throws away 4 1/2 lbs or trash each day.
    • That's about 30 lbs a week, or about 120,000 lbs in a person's lifetime.
    • This has tripled since 1960, and has been growing at 4-5% per year
    • Collection is a big deal: There are about 180,000 garbage trucks in the US - that's double the number of transit buses
    • They average only 2.8 mpg - the worst mileage of any road vehicle (that's because they're heavy - typically 10 tons - they do a lot of stop/start driving, they idle 70% of the time, and they rev the engine to run the built-in compactor)
    • They each drive an average 25,000 miles a year - that's once around earth!
    • They burn over 1 billion gallons of fuel per year. That's 3,000,000 gallons every day!
    • All of this adds up to a lot of fuel, and a lot of money spent on collection.
  • Diesel exhaust is highly polluting:
    • Soot particles trigger asthma and other cardio-respiratory illness
    • Smog and haze pollution
    • CO2 emissions are primary greenhouse gases that cause climate change and global warming.

For info and tips on how to reduce, reuse and recycle, visit the US EPA website

For some information on efforts to recover recycling and other useful materials from the waste stream (at so-called Material Recovery Facilities or MRFs), see our recycling page

For more information on solid waste and recycling, check out these links: US EPA reports: