what does knowing where your trash goes have to do with climate change?
i have an article about where trash goes and what does this have to do with climate change? i honestly have no clue.
like why knowing where our trash goes is important. not the trash itself.
Organic waste often gets covered up and decomposes anaerobically (ie without oxygen). So in landfill it often releases methane instead of CO2 like it would if it were incinerated. Methane, molecule for molecule, packs a much higher warming punch than CO2 (about 25 times higher is the current best estimate, but recent research suggests it could be even bigger).
Also, it’s not so much what the waste does, as what it affects further down the supply chain.
It takes trees to make paper, and a lot of energy to make paper/glass/metal/etc from raw resources. If you throw away a can then any new cans will need to be made from ore which is very energy intensive.
If you recycle the can, this prevents a new one from being made from ore; and recycling saves approximately 95% of the energy for aluminium (it doesn’t save as much for plastic, paper and glass, but in most cases you’re still better off).
Most of our energy comes from fossil fuels, so by reducing energy use you’re reducing fossil fuel use and therefore CO2 emissions, which the overwhelming majority of the scientific community says is very important in global warming.
It does not really have to do with climate change. Perhaps the difference between a landfill 100 km away, or one 10 km away would have a slight difference in transportation cost/impact but that is all I can think of.
The real thing is creation of trash. Production from the raw materials of each component, to the manufacturing, to the packaging, to the transportation to the store, to OUR transportation to the store and home to use the product, is highly energy intensive and contributes to climate change.
Trash that goes into landfill breaks down releasing chemicals into the environment. If you know where your trash goes, the recyclables can be recycled and more dangerous waste put into safe storage.
Where your trash goes is also related to how it will break down, depending on what the trash is made of. Say all your trash goes to a landfill where it will eventually be buried; if the materials decompose without oxygen, any organic (once living) compunds will decompose and form methane (CH4) which is a greenhouse gas several times stronger than carbon dioxide. When decomposition of organic materials occurs with oxygen, CO2 is formed.
If all your trash were to go to a place where recyclables are flitered out before going into a landfill, that would also affect what decomposes and therefore what chemical compounds are formed.