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The current United States situates the recycling problem at a disadvantage. There is some awareness about the current situation of global warming and that we need to recycle as a society. The process of recycling is a bit more complicated than what it seems, as mentioned before, and it is a fact that many households put all recyclables together into plastic bags and dispose of them on a specific bin. This bin is usually cleared by a truck that is part of a larger city infrastructure and taken into a dedicated plant where the contents are separated. In big urban areas, like Los Angeles, this process is broken down into sectors that have their own warehouses that are usually privately owned. The sector that is owned by the state mostly ends up at the county’s landfill. The rest of the private sector has the opportunity for incentives that apply when any kind of waste is removed from the city. The reason why these incentives are active is because the city landfills are running out of space due to the huge amounts of waste created daily by society by consumer economies. Packaging of products is defined by the EPA as containers and packaging that is assumed to be discarded the same year the products they contain are purchased. This type of packaging make up for 77.9 million tons of solid waste were 29 million tons end up in the municipal landfills. Packaging is divided into paper, paperboard, glass, steel, aluminum, plastics, and wood. Plastic consists of 9 million tons with half of it ending up in landfills, a third is recycled and the rest is turned into energy. Steel does far better as most of it is not produced in households. A total of 2.2 million tons, were 20% of steel ends up in landfills while three quarters is recycled and the rest is used for energy recovery. Half of the 1.8 million tons
of aluminum as recycled and the other half ends up in landfills. Paper and paperboard generation reach 31.3 million tons but 92% of it is recycled while most of the leftovers ends up in landfills. Wood packaging consists of 9.8 million tons of waste. Almost half of it ends up in landfills and the rest is recycled. Plastic is uncontrollable as it is categorized as one thing. Plastics are not one type and not all kinds are recyclable. This makes it very complicated to keep track of but what has been tracked ends up at a total of 14.7 million tons. 69% of the recorded plastic is landfilled and the rest is recycled. This analysis of the EPA does not include construction waste, demolition debris, wastewater, sludge, non-hazardous industrial wastes, and electronic waste. My focus is on electronic waste as it seems to be the most toxic besides industrial waste, and it seems to be the new leader of toxicity when treated in a noncontrolled environment. This was an analysis from 2015 and only from the USA. It is expected for the numbers to steadily rise as population increases. It is true that the nation needs a change in policy and better ways to publicly release information that may increase awareness. Lagos, receives massive amounts of electronic waste and in between all of the unregulated imports, most of it I assume is illegally imported. Every electronic product needs a logic board. This board is made up of layers of copper and fiberglass. The layers lead to a compact way of having more paths for components to communicate. This layering makes each logic board value increase when recycling. Other metals used in small quantities are gold and lead. Some of the older products contain mercury, the