Have you ever wondered about how much trash your town generates? Or where the trash goes after you have gotten rid of it? Silke Psula, Solid Waste Coordinator for the City of Portsmouth has provided these interesting thoughts and facts on our waste. Think about these facts next time you go to throw something in your trash can!

The City of Portsmouth averages 12,265 tons of waste annually. This includes municipal solid waste (in general kitchen and bathroom waste), recyclables, yard waste, wood waste, scrap metal and appliances, electronics, tires and concrete. The City's curbside recycling rate is 21%; however if you calculate all the waste that is diverted from the landfill, it is 58.64% - impressive!

Portsmouth's waste goes to the Rochester landfill. A landfill is a lined hole in the ground which goes as deep as it goes high. The landfill averages 300-400 trucks per day of varying tonnage. The City has 2 trucks delivering waste to the landfill 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Portsmouth disposes of an average of 5,258 tons annually at the landfill.

According to Silke Psula, there is a sort of hierarchy of ways to dispose of waste, starting with the most environmentally responsible method. The first thing we should all do is to make an effort to reduce our waste. Next, we should try and be creative and reuse items that were otherwise going to be thrown out. If you have items that cannot be reused, then the next step is to recycle them if possible. For waste that cannot be reduced, reused, or recycled the next option is for it to go to a waste to energy plant. A waste to energy plant is a form of reusing trash; the waste is burned, converting it to energy. This method reduces the volume of the waste, burning the trash reduces it to ash that is 10% of the initial volume. This ash can then be brought to the landfill. The final two places that our waste can travel is straight to an incinerator or landfill.

Have you ever wondered how long it takes some of the common things we dispose of to biodegrade? Here is a quick list from www.worldwise.com. It is also important to note that even though most of these things eventually biodegrade, this does not mean that they biodegrade into nutrient rich soil

• Cotton rags- 1 to 5 months
• Paper- 2 to 5 months
• Rope- 3 to 14 months
• Cigarette butts- 12 to 144 months
• Plastic bags- 120 to 240 months
• Tin can- 600 to 1,200 months
• Plastic 6-pack holder rings- 5,400 months
• Glass bottles- 12 million months
• Plastic bottles- Forever

An average bag of trash weighs 20 pounds by the time a resident considers it full and knots it up to place curbside for disposal. That's before recycling! On average 8 pounds is paper; 2.5 pounds is commingled containers; 4 pounds is food waste or compostable; 1.5 pounds is other (i.e. textile, ink cartridges, batteries). If all these items were recycled or composted the resident would be left with only 4 pounds of true trash that at this time the industry is unable to recycle. Think about this the next time you put your trash out to be picked up!

Here is a critical question to consider: what is the definition of "trash"? Trash can be defined as anything that people no longer have a use for or no longer want. An interesting definition, because you may no longer have a use for a shirt you have out grown, however should that mean its trash? Further, its interesting to observe that people are more than willing to spend their hard earned money to purchase an item - want and use the item - but once they are done with it, in essence they have deemed it unworthy - of no value. This translates to the fact that they don't think it should cost them anything - after all its of no value to them any more. However, there is still a cost with transporting it away; lining the landfill; paying the employees who manage the landfill and the equipment to run the landfill, etc. There is a cost to disposing unwanted items.

Household Hazardous Waste Day for Portsmouth, Newington and Greenland residents is May 22, 8:00 AM to noon.