WISPIRG -- We wanted to see where all our trash was going: Here's what we found out
We wanted to see where all our trash was going: Here's what we found out WISPIRG Foundation From: action@pirg.org To: Mark M Giese Sun, Dec 28 2025 at 9:54 AM Mark, We have a massive trash problem. Every year, Americans throw away an average of 1,788 pounds of trash per person. That's about the equivalent of every single item in a studio apartment, most of which heads straight to our landfills ... where it piles on top of last year's trash. We wanted to see exactly where all that trash was going. Our new report "Trash in America" breaks down exactly how much Americans throw away in a year and where all that stuff goes. Here's what we found. 1 In a single year, the U.S. threw out over 265 million metric tons of trash. That's equivalent to about 726 Empire State Buildings. So what's in all that stuff? One of the biggest chunks -- more than 28% -- came from packaging. Less than half of all plastic packaging in the U.S. is recyclable, and only a ti...
