How do you spend your weekends? Last Saturday (Sept. 17, 2011) nearly 1,000 people spent theirs at Rumpke Sanitary Landfill just outside of Cincinnati. Nope. They weren’t bringing their trash to the landfill, and it wasn’t one of those huge clean-up events. It was just an ordinary Day of Discovery at the region’s landfill.
Every other year, Rumpke hosts a Day of Discovery at its Colerain Township landfill and invites neighbors, customers and curious citizens to learn what happens to their trash after it disappears from the curb.
Day of Discovery at Rumpke Sanitary Landfill.
While this event offered guests booths presented by green partners such as Building Value, Civic Garden Center and the Cincinnati Zoo, and information from community partners such as United Health Care and Northwest High School, the day offered much more.
After mingling with Rumpke Recycling mascots - Binny and Binita - and Cincinnati Reds mascots, climbing on some landfill equipment and trucks, or jumping in the enormous elephant bounce house, guests boarded buses and discovered the truth about their trash.
The truth being the average American produces nearly 5 pounds of trash a day. Rumpke Sanitary Landfill offers an environmentally-sound disposal site for about 2 million tons of the tri-state’s trash annually. If we all took the time to recycle our paper, plastic and glass bottles, and steel and aluminum cans, landfill tonnage could be cut in half.
While reusing and recycling are the best options for our waste, the decomposing trash generates methane which is converted into natural gas and provides enough energy for up to 25,000 homes in the tri-state. That gas is also used to fuel Rumpke’s fleet of compressed natural gas garbage trucks.
For all guests, we hope it was a day of discovery including discoveries about Rumpke’s waste reduction and recycling efforts, renewable energy options and overall environmentalism. There’s simply more to your trash than meets the eye, and although it’s waste, when handled properly, our trash can offer renewable treasures, a concept Rumpke makes a reality with its everyday operations.
About the Author: Amanda Pratt is director of corporate communications at Rumpke.
