…claims the “City of Yarra Waste and Recycling Guide” which landed in our letterbox a few weeks ago.
Of course, there’s no reference of any kind as to where this statistic comes from, or how they count “household purchases”. By weight? Volume? Price? Does the packaging count as part of the purchase? (I’m thinking it must)
Nonetheless, any way you slice it I find the claim wholly incredible. But I’m not having any luck figuring out what the real number might be.
Anyone know any hard reputable figures for the percentage of stuff we buy which ends up in the bin within <time period> ?
I’m curious too, as well as about what counts as a “household purchase.” Need it be a purchase of something for the household, as opposed to food or office supplies or baby toys? Do they count furniture?
Any way you can contact the City of Yarra people for more information?
+1: quite literally, call them on it. I’ve called environmental orgs before to ask where they got their statistics. Sometimes their numbers are legit and they’ve got the cite on file, sometimes it’s a great big steaming pile of bovine residue.
I’m curious to hear what they have to say; let us know what you find out.
While I know nothing about the specific statistic in question, household purchases is a fairly standard economic measure. It would combine all goods and services purchased by household consumers rather than businesses or governments. It would definitely include food, baby toys, and furniture, and paper supplies for household use. Services presumably have little landfill potential, so we’d be looking at purchases of goods by household consumers. Consumer goods get broken down into durable, semi-durable, and non-durable: http://www.askjim.biz/answers/consumer-goods-definition_3867.php
The 60% figure doesn’t sound that far off too me, assuming that the food purchased winds up in a landfill after leaving your home as solid waste. You buy furniture once and it lasts for years. You buy groceries every week. Looking at this breakdown of spending by durables vs. nondurables, over 60% of spending is on nondurables: http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=65&Freq=Qtr&FirstYear=2007&LastYear=2009
It doesn’t seem so far-fetched to me. If I think about the stuff I buy in a weekly shop, it is mostly groceries and other consumables. Diapers, shampoo, paper towels, batteries, cleaning products, etc. Pretty much all that stuff is going in a landfill within 6 months. Things I buy that last longer like clothes and pillows and DVDs I don’t buy nearly as often (obviously…because they last longer!)
Although I would hope it is lower for me because we recycle quite a bit, but I would guess the average person does not recycle as much (it is free and convenient in our city).
with such a high amount and short time frame a large part of that has to be packaging which is a huge volume. marketing can put a large amount of packaging onto especially small items. much packaging in non-recyclable materials and goes to landfill.
I’d love to learn more about the claim, but I don’t have any reason to doubt it.
As a general rule, any time you see “household purchases” what they’re talking about is spending by individuals for their personal needs, as opposed to business or government expenditures. It’s just a way of making it clear that they’re not using a larger definition of consumers. It is rarely (if ever) used as a way to distinguish the products themselves.
The bottom line is that most of what we buy is intentionally disposable/consumable. Everything in your bathrooms and kitchens (except for the fixtures) is probably consumed within 6 months. Anyone who has kids knows that 6 months can be an optimistic goal for the lifespan of clothes and shoes.
Well, the *compacted *packaging may not make up 60% of the volume, but otherwise, yes, the packaging needs to contain the volume.
Another reason this figure might seem high is if you personally are young and currently furnishing a household. At that stage you are buying more durables. As you get older, you already have the durables and a higher percentage of your purchases are consumables.
For starters, 14% of food gets tossed by households rather than eaten. (Cite)
At least some sewage treatment facilities take all of the solid waste and dump it in landfills after a certain amount of bacterial digestion. So toilet paper and “processed food” could both wind up in landfills. The Master speaks, though we’re not given an indication of just how much is land-filled compared to burning, etc. Other toiletries, like diapers, facial tissue, cotton balls and feminine hygiene products are intended to be disposed of after use.
Also, packaging may be more than you think. My deodorant has pretty hefty packaging compared to the actual product. Costco sells soap in a shrink-wrapped box that contains a dozen smaller boxes, and toothpaste in a box that contains four boxes with one tube each. Tampons have a box, individual wrappers and applicators. And let’s not even look at the typical TV dinner or take-out meal.
Well, I just sent off a mail to the council (Yarra is my local council region, in case that was unclear before.
Harriet’s link was really interesting. I’m actually quite surprised at how low the “food” component was - I would think about half of all the stuff that comes into our house is food, one way or another. However, I’m pretty much assuming that food wastes (of the food that’s actually eaten) don’t end up in landfill - in fact, that was one of the factors that made me doubt the original stat. Our local water treatment plant is Werribee Sewerage Farm - as far as I can see, the water component is recycled and the solid component is used to grow grass.
It’s possible that the figure is from a proper study somewhere but may not really be applicable to everyone’s local conditions.
And - good point about the actual volume of packaging - I guess I wouldn’t be totally amazed if 20-30% of the weight of most purchased products consists of the packaging which will be thrown out straight away (well, in our household played with, used for craft projects and THEN thrown out, but well within 6 months anyway)
A good portion of the weight and volume of our trash comes in catalogs that are sent to us unsolicited. I think my record is 29 in one day. Thank goodness we have curbside recycling. But won’t somebody please think of the trees?
seems reasonable to me. just count the number of individual items including groceries and toiletries and 60% is not surprising at all. None of my groceries, by far the largest purchase I make in terms of number of items, last for six months.