Current Situation in Puerto Rico: The Bottomless Trash Can.
One of the largest problems Puerto Rico currently faces is the situation regarding large amount of waste disposal building up and our island's absolute lack of a recycling system, or even a general conscious of this actually being a problem. This situation will continue to get much worse in the next couple of years, as waste disposal apparently is not a top priority for our island's government. To further analyze waste disposal, let's observe some key demographic information about Puerto Rico:.
A. Approx 3.8 million population.
B. 1.2 million households.
C. $8,000 per person income.
D. $24,000 per household income.
E. 78 municipalities.
F. Island is 100 miles long and 30 miles wide.
Our 3.8 million habitants generate a whopping 8,100 tons of solid waste per day, this being the estimated amount that the government has been publishing since the 90's and is expected to be much greater. This is equal to approximately 4.9 pounds of solid waste daily per person. The Solid Waste Authority announced that the official amount being generated will be released within the next month. Of this incredible amount of waste being produced daily, .05% percent of it is currently being recycled. This means that it would take 365 days to recycle the waste produced in 4 hours! There is currently one Materials Recover Facility (MRF) on the island located in Cidra, called Environmental Plastics of PR, although various others are being developed. To worsen this situation, the reality among the people of Puerto Rico is that the majority does not consider recycling to be important and continue to dispose of non-perishable waste as if it did not have any impact on the environment. The current disposal process being used for the remaining 99.5% of solid waste NOT being recycled is destined to Puerto Rico's landfills.
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What is being disposed? Observe table 1:.
Paper and Carton 40.