What Happens to Trash After it Leaves You?
Your trash ends up at different destinations, varying widely between regions and states, or even cities. The most popular destination for solid waste is landfill. Other than landfills, waste in the U.S. also goes to recycling centers, composters, and waste-to-energy plants.
Where Trash Goes First
Where does the trash go after you throw it away? Whether it’s picked up in a trash can, roll-off dumpster, or somewhere else, your garbage might make a few stops before reaching its final destination.
Material Recovery Facilities
Material recovery facilities are locations that store debris to separate useful materials from the waste stream before reaching its final destination.
Transfer Stations
These stations provide a temporary location for garbage trucks to drop off their waste. Here, the garbage is prepared for transfer, and then, it is loaded into bigger trucks that will take the waste to its ultimate destination.
Where Does Garbage End Up?
- Landfills
Landfills store waste in the form of layers. As a layer fills with the garbage, another sheet covers it. Eventually, garbage will decompose in a landfill.
- Recycling Facilities & Composters
Roughly 35% of all solid waste goes to either a recycling or composting facility. The goal of both recycling and composting is to reuse waste by turning it into new products.
- Trash Incinerators
Trash incinerators are large industrial furnaces that burn municipal solid waste. These facilities operate at extremely high temperatures, hot enough to turn any amount of trash into ash.
- Anaerobic Digesters
Another form of waste-to-energy conversion is anaerobic digestion, a biological process that uses microorganisms to turn organic materials into energy and fertilizer.
You now have better know-how into what happens to your trash, but do you know what you can and can’t throw away in the first place? To learn more about what you can throw in a dumpster, call Waste Solutions USA at (832)-808-4755 .