Paper. Food. Plastic. Common trash people throw away: 4.5 pounds per person per day to be exact. But 4.5 pounds is too much for the dying planet to handle. 

Each day, the average person throws away almost 6 pounds of trash with 1.5 being recycled. All of this trash goes to local landfills, which produce methane, a greenhouse gas that is 21-28 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. About 60% of the methane found in the atmosphere is from human-based activities. 

According to a World Bank report, the amount of trash the population generates will double by the year 2025. An average day the population produces around 3.5 million tons of trash, but at this rate, by 2025 the average amount of trash will be over six million tons per day. 

People think that their actions don’t make a difference, but it all helps. Everyone should be concerned that methane levels in the atmosphere have more than doubled, contributing about 20% of the gas that is causing the warming of the planet. According to Climate Central, 2018 and the previous years were the hottest on record of the Earth’s history, with heat levels continuing to rise.

It’s true, while one person alone cannot stop the millions of tons of trash the human population produces a day, even small efforts make an impact. Easy ways to reduce trash and methane levels are to research the rules of recycling, use less plastic bags, make a meal plan to reduce uneaten food, make use of reusable containers, start composting all uneaten food minus meat and dairy, eat more vegan meals, cut down on a few burgers a month, and stop using plastic water bottles.

The earth has a serious trash problem that is not going away if no one starts doing anything. Four-plus pounds of trash a day is too much, and if the population continues to follow this pattern of wasteful living, the people of Earth will commit to their destruction.