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"If your habits resemble those of average Americans, you generate about 4.6 pounds of solid trash per day. This adds up to big trouble for the environment. Americans are generating waste products faster than nature can break them down and using up resources faster than they can be replaced. How can we find ways to meet our current economic and social needs without compromising the ability of our children, and our children's children, to do the same? Our success will depend on understanding the difference between * Sustainable practices: practices that provide ongoing economic and social benefits without degrading the environment. * Unsustainable practices: "quick fixes" that fill an immediate need for resources. Over time, however, these practices deplete or damage natural resources so they cannot be used or enjoyed by future generations. In this exhibit, you can find out how to improve next year's environmental record. You'll learn how waste is handled now and how some communities are doing it better. In the activities, you can test your knowledge about hazardous waste we generate in our homes and try to shrink a landfill. "

"When your parents ask you to take out the garbage, do you wonder where it goes after it's picked up on trash day? In some communities, it's taken to a waste-to-energy facility, which burns the materials and produces electricity. This carefully supervised method of dealing with solid waste uses air pollution controls to safeguard human health and the environment."

"On average, each man, woman and child in America generates or makes about 4.5 pounds of trash every day. That comes out to more than 1,500 pounds per person, per year! Some of the solid waste is reused or recycled, but as we learned in the Education Department, most of it is buried in landfills. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has found that the kinds of things Americans throw away can be placed into main classes or categories. "