To make sure we’re diverting as much waste from landfills as possible, it’s important to be aware of all the products that can be sent to your local recycling centers. There are many products that, if you separate them correctly, you can send directly to your local curbside recycling program.

Even so, as this varies depending on the capacities and facilities of the collection centers, it is always better to ask directly at your local collection center.

The products that can generally be deposited in recycling centers are:

• Paper, newspapers, magazines, and mixed papers (As long as they are clean)
• Bottles of plastic (almost all types)
• Glass jars and bottles
• Rigid plastic objects
• Cans, aluminum, steel, and metal containers

Sanitary landfills are designated sites for the disposal of garbage or other types of solid waste. Large holes are built at these sites into which garbage is buried. Until a few years ago, landfills were a major source of pollution due to the contact of toxic waste with the environment, but today they are designed to prevent waste from reaching and contaminating groundwater.

Sanitary landfills are built with a layering system that isolates debris from air and water, which is vital to preventing pollution. The garbage is compacted in cells to make the most of the available space, for which heavy machinery such as excavators and compaction equipment is used. Some of the polluting byproducts of garbage generation, such as methane, are captured and used to generate electricity. However, landfills continue to represent an important source of pollution, since when they reach their maximum capacity, the land on which they are built will take thousand of years to recover.

The production of human waste increases year by year. This vast amount of trash has formed islands hundreds of thousands of miles long in the oceans. There is so much litter that ends up in the oceans and on land that it has entered the food chain, greatly damaging biodiversity.

One way to reduce the amount of human waste is recycling in recycling centers; by lengthening the useful life of materials and preventing them from ending up in landfills, but also avoiding the production of new materials and thereby avoiding the over-exploitation of raw materials and the pollution that comes with the extraction of materials and their production.

Recycling is the process by which the raw materials that make up the waste that we use daily such as paper, glass, aluminum, plastic, etc., are transformed into new materials. This prevents these wastes from entering the seas or earth. But, for this to happen, a series of steps need to be carried out:

• At home – separate and clean waste.
• At local recycling centers – sort, pack, and store, for later sale.
• At processing industries – treat the materials and transform them into new products.

For a few years, the United States entered a crisis due to the accumulation of waste, which was triggered by the new waste policies of China, which was the main buyer of waste in the United States. These new policies are much stricter and among other restrictions, they lowered the minimum standards for pollutants to -1%, which excludes the majority of waste from the United States.

The fashion industry has become the second most polluting in the world, only behind the big oil companies. The environmental impact of the textile industry extends throughout its “commercial ecosystem”: from production, distribution, and exhibition to acquisition, care, and washing processes and, finally, its disposal. In the United States, more than 12 million tons of clothing are dumped in landfills annually.

Clothing and textiles are 100% recyclable, but only 15% are recycled in the United States. To recycle clothing, it is best to first consider whether it can have a second life and if so, give it away, donate it or take it to a second-hand store, always clean and dry to prevent the spread of bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

When it comes to clothes that are already in very poor condition or pieces of fabric that can no longer be reused, it is best to take them to a collection point that accepts this type of waste. At recycling centers for textiles, clothing is turned into fiber and used to make new products, such as padding, rubber-coated playgrounds, and some materials for the automotive industry.