The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency estimated how much paper Minnesotans throw away in 30 seconds and then combined that much into a giant ball to display at the Minnesota State Fair in August 2014.
Officially it weighed 426 pounds. It was 9 feet 7 inches tall and 32.2 feet around. It made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest ball of paper in the world. Apart from the Agency’s efforts, that paper would not have been recycled.
Those figures represent nothing but paper, not recyclables in general, destined for landfills. Agency employees wrapped the whole mess in netting made of paper. They used no glue, tape, or other adhesives. You can’t see that ball any more. After the fair, the agency took it to a company in St. Paul that recycled it.
Let me underscore what that amount of paper represents: the average amount of paper thrown out and not recycled in Minnesota in 30 seconds or less.
It excludes the amount of paper that’s recycled or composted. It adds up to about a billion pounds of wasted wastepaper wasting landfill space every year. In Minnesota alone.
Minnesota’s population (about 5,420,000 in 2013) represents 1/58 of the total population of the United States (about 316,370,000 in 2013). For the sake of easy arithmetic, let’s assume that Americans as a whole discard paper at the same rate. How big a ball would it take to represent 30 seconds worth of paper discarded and not recycled nationwide?
- It would weigh 24,708 pounds.
- It would be 555 feet 10 inches tall, 250 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.
- It would be 1867.6 feet around—more than a third of a mile.
No one will construct that big a ball. No paper netting strong enough to hold it exists. Neither does any truck large enough to transport it. And pity a single bulldozer operator given the task of breaking it apart! 30 seconds worth of paper bound for landfills that ought to be recycled.
I wish I had some wise suggestions for increasing the recycling rate. Waste management professionals have grappled with that problem for decades.
I don’t even have to persuade you. After all, anyone who reads this blog probably acts more for the sake of our environment than the average person. But perhaps you could forward this post to some of the average people you know.
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