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Gainesville Zero Waste News
Florida Landfills Run Out of Room
Did you know that Florida’s landfills will run out of capacity by 2030? Did you also know that every day in America, we throw out roughly 30% of our food, nearly half of our recyclables, and countless tons of usable furniture, appliances, clothes and electronics?
Landfilling is far from an elegant solution: put stuff in a hole, and make sure the hole is far away.
But it is an effective way of moving unwanted materials away from where we live. Combined with sewage and wastewater systems, it’s part of the infrastructure of the modern world that results in more sanitary lifestyles and better societal health outcomes.
However, landfills have frighteningly finite space, so what can we do?
The answer starts upstream, with what gets manufactured and what gets consumed. If furniture, electronics, and clothing stores all had takeback programs, it would go a long way toward reducing our collective burden on our very limited landfill space. And we can advocate for more progress in that arena with things like extended producer responsibility (or EPR).
But there are still actions we can take today!
Refuse unnecessary things. Rethink shopping habits. Start composting (gainesvillefl.gov/Compost). Buy secondhand whenever possible. Shop local. Repair and donate whenever possible (gainesvillefl.gov/WasteWizard). Recycle the accepted items (gainesvillefl.gov/WhatCanBeRecycled). And talk to your friends and neighbors about ways to reduce waste.
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