What is Household Waste?
Garbage is garbage, right? Right, but garbage is made up of many different types of waste that come from various places and travel to even further once they are discarded. Household waste is the garbage generated in our homes daily. This seemingly benign form of waste is far from harmless and is often veiled as a collaboration of necessary items ranging from food scraps, to newspapers, to paint.
Within the household, there are two forms of waste that can be found: non-hazardous (MSW) waste and hazardous waste. You may be surprised to find out that these sneaky “vermin” come from items that we use every day!
Food scraps, paper waste, plastic containers, paper cups, etc. account for a large portion of our daily non-hazardous waste. Every time you go through the coffee drive-thru on the way to work you buy non-hazardous waste that you later will throw away; you buy your garbage! The skull and cross bone items (hazardous items) we use can be a bit deceiving: batteries, light bulbs, and cell phones, oh my! All of these desired, and admittedly needed items pose significant risks to users and the environment alike. How you use them and how you discard them can affect the levels of toxicity you may become exposed to short and long term. No, the cadmium in your cell phone battery does not go away just because you throw it away.
All of this, in a nut shell is Household waste. Please browse through the links provided on our site to learn more about the different types of household waste as well as how you can help “take out and get out of the trash!”
Within the household, there are two forms of waste that can be found: non-hazardous (MSW) waste and hazardous waste. You may be surprised to find out that these sneaky “vermin” come from items that we use every day!
Food scraps, paper waste, plastic containers, paper cups, etc. account for a large portion of our daily non-hazardous waste. Every time you go through the coffee drive-thru on the way to work you buy non-hazardous waste that you later will throw away; you buy your garbage! The skull and cross bone items (hazardous items) we use can be a bit deceiving: batteries, light bulbs, and cell phones, oh my! All of these desired, and admittedly needed items pose significant risks to users and the environment alike. How you use them and how you discard them can affect the levels of toxicity you may become exposed to short and long term. No, the cadmium in your cell phone battery does not go away just because you throw it away.
All of this, in a nut shell is Household waste. Please browse through the links provided on our site to learn more about the different types of household waste as well as how you can help “take out and get out of the trash!”
Consider this…
Walking through our morning routines, we can get an idea of how much we waste daily. To start, you get up and take a shower using water (about 15-25 gallons according to Answers.com) that becomes contaminated with soap and detergents you elect to use (likely because they smell good and the plastic containers they come in are pretty). This water is then run off into our sewer systems that go to out of sight, out of mind locations. You may clean your ears and toss the cotton swabs, apply makeup that is housed in large decorative plastic containers, brush your teeth with tooth paste in plastic tubes, and so on. All of the items we use eventually end up in the trash and we replace them with more of the same that will also end up...where? In the trash!
Once "pressed and dressed" after expending more waste contaminated water into the sewer system, you may choose to have breakfast. Coffee grounds and the filter, paper towels, food wrappers, and newspapers end up in the garbage as a result of this activity, not to mention the additional water used! All of this is just from the typical morning; we still have the rest of the day to account for the remaining tons of waste we generate in our daily lives.
Walking through our morning routines, we can get an idea of how much we waste daily. To start, you get up and take a shower using water (about 15-25 gallons according to Answers.com) that becomes contaminated with soap and detergents you elect to use (likely because they smell good and the plastic containers they come in are pretty). This water is then run off into our sewer systems that go to out of sight, out of mind locations. You may clean your ears and toss the cotton swabs, apply makeup that is housed in large decorative plastic containers, brush your teeth with tooth paste in plastic tubes, and so on. All of the items we use eventually end up in the trash and we replace them with more of the same that will also end up...where? In the trash!
Once "pressed and dressed" after expending more waste contaminated water into the sewer system, you may choose to have breakfast. Coffee grounds and the filter, paper towels, food wrappers, and newspapers end up in the garbage as a result of this activity, not to mention the additional water used! All of this is just from the typical morning; we still have the rest of the day to account for the remaining tons of waste we generate in our daily lives.