Trash tally: Your share is 383 kg a year
Last Updated Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:58:06 EST
CBC NewsCanadian households produced about 12 million tonnes of garbage in 2002, the latest year for which figures are available.
That works out to about 383 kilograms – enough to fill 30 green garbage bags – per person. And that's up 6.8 per cent from 2000.
An estimated 2.5 million tonnes (about one-fifth of the total) was recycled or otherwise saved from the dump, a 17 per cent increase in two years.
Statistics Canada issued the trash figures on Friday in a summary of a report on waste disposal and other environmental matters.
It said getting rid of the stuff costs municipalities more than $1.5 billion a year. Even so, households accounted for only about 40 per cent of the waste generated in 2002.
More paper is being recycled The total – counting industrial, commercial, institutional, construction and demolition waste – came to more than 30.4 million tonnes, a 3.9 per cent increase from 2000.
Canadian paper mills re-used an estimated 2.8 million tonnes of waste paper in 2002, the agency said.
Since 1995, about 40 per cent of waste paper has been recycled each year, compared with 26 per cent in 1990, it said.
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Topic: NFR: Trash Tally (Read 1670 times)