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cut its waste production by 84 percent between 2005 and 2012 through using reusable packaging, Sustainable Plant reports.

about $27,000 a year in garbage disposal costs, the article says

recycling most materials from municipal solid waste saves on average three to five times more energy than does burning them for electricity.

As it turns out, countries with the highest rates of garbage incineration — Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, for example, all incinerate at least 50 percent of their waste — also tend to have high rates of recycling and composting of organic materials and food waste. But zero-wasters argue that were it not for large-scale incineration, these environmentally Zero-waste advocates say a major problem is the long-term contracts that waste-to-energy plants are locked into.conscious countries would have even higher rates of recycling. Germany, for example, incinerates 37 percent of its waste and recycles 45 percent — a considerably better recycling rate than the 30-plus percent of Scandinavian countries.

(In the United States, more than half of all waste is dumped in landfills, and about 12 percent burned, of which only a portion is used to produce energy.)

According to the Product Stewardship Institute, the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the challenge brought by PhRMA, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, and the Biotechnology Industry Organization will pave the way for more extended producer responsibility laws, which hold manufacturers responsible for the end-of-life management of their products.