United States of America

The average U.S. resident produces 1.8 kgs or 4 lbs of garbage a day at home, work or school. Slightly more than 22 percent of all waste is recovered for recycling and composting while a little over 15 percent of all solid waste is burned.
The U.S. still records the largest per capita generation of municipal solid waste among OECD countries with 657 kgs per person and year, or 200 million tons for the nation.

The most common recycling scheme in the U.S. is curbside collection. Residents are provided with special bins in which to put recyclable items. The bins are collected just like other trash and sorted. This is expensive but effective. Waste Management, an American giant that runs more recycling schemes than anybody else, estimates that their most efficient curb-side collection schemes cost USD 70 a ton. Add to that an estimated USD 40 a ton for sorting and cleaning the waste, and the cost of collect schemes start at USD 110 a ton. Of that an estimated USD 30-40 can be met by selling the scrap.

Many communities provide their residents with a toll free telephone hot line strictly for recycling questions. In Los Angeles County, for example, residents can call the hot line 24 hours a day to get detailed information (in English or Spanish) on recycling as well as the whereabouts of the county's Hazmobile. It's a truck that covers the entire area on a set schedule for the sole purpose of collecting hazardous waste.

Municipal solid waste is expected to decline slightly on a per capita basis by the year 2000 mostly as a result of source reduction efforts as governed by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Its goal of promoting waste reduction, reuse and recycling is succeeding. In fact the proportion of waste recovered tripled between 1970 and 1993.
Despite the fact that 38 States have enacted more than 140 recycling laws, with some having also established tax incentive programs for recycling, overall U.S. recycling rates are lower than those seen in other OECD countries.

In spite of slow efforts in some localities, most municipal waste is now disposed of in lined landfills, incinerated, or composted. Unsound disposal operations have been shut down. The share of incineration is not expected to grow and is likely to remain at about 16 percent, while landfilling is projected to decrease by about 10 percent between 1993 and 2000. The RCRA program is estimated to cost $234 billion between 1990 and 2020.