Chad Braatz, Sustainability Coordinator for the City of Monmouth, gave a breakdown of how much waste goes through the city’s transfer station, and why it’s important to be mindful of the trash you’re producing.
Monmouth has approximately 3,200 homes. The city picks up between 8.5 to 10.2 tons of trash from around 640 homes per day. He estimated that the city produces just over 486 tons of garbage per year. However, Braatz is encouraged by the increased level of recycling he has seen from some Monmouth citizens, and encourages others to get even more involved.
“Recycling for July from the residents was 47 tons of material that came off the boulevard, which is pretty impressive,” Braatz said. “Just for your information, Thursday – you guys out there on Thursday’s route – you continually seem to come up with more stuff for recycling than anybody else in town, by about 15 percent. So, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday – guys, let’s get it together and kind of show Thursday we can do a better job of this.”
Braatz says, that ultimately, there is one important reason why waste management and recycling are so important: our drinking water.
“And of course, the bottom line to all this is water quality. If solid waste isn’t managed properly, it gets into our drinking water. Our drinking water is finite. It’s the same amount of water that is on this planet that was here when the dinosaurs were here. If you destroy that or pollute that material, you’re eventually going to run out of quality water,” he said.
written by Jackson Kane
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