Results are in From the 2006 Waste Composition Study
What do corrugated cardboard, newspaper, food waste and paperboard have in common? They all made the top ten list of the most prevalent types of waste disposed of in the Larimer County Landfill.
Results are in from a waste composition study that the Larimer County Solid Waste Department did last year. MSW Consultants (Atlanta, Ga.) was contracted to sort trash for a week each in September and December. The contractors took incoming loads of trash from four sources—residential waste, commercial waste, self-hauled waste and construction and demolition waste—and sorted it into 44 categories. They provided aggregate results (from all four sources put together) as well as individual results based on each source.
Wastes coming from both commercial and residential sources were rather similar in their breakdown, with paper products (about 31 percent), food waste (about 17 percent) and “other” (also about 17 percent) rounding out the top three groupings from both sources. “Other” includes construction and demolition materials as well as miscellaneous items like electronics, diapers, and carpet. The amount of paper in the trash has decreased compared with a similar, but less detailed, study done in 1998 that showed that paper made up 44 percent of residential trash.
“Looking at just paper, we seem to be doing better at recycling than in the past, but I’m confident we can do better still,” said Stephen Gillette, Solid Waste Department director. “This study will help us determine what areas are important to focus on in the coming years as we try to divert more trash away from the landfill by recycling, composting or some other method.”
Complete results [pdf] are available online.