Early January, I had the opportunity to visit one of Waste Management’s offices and learn more about the energy consumption and life cycle of the waste we produce. This includes the empty pizza boxes, the take out utensils, hazardous waste like batteries and e-waste, and the multitude of food scraps. One of the biggest mind-blowing moment was how much plastic is produced and either sent to the landfill because of contamination; it can be sold to other countries which either burn it for energy (adding tons of GHG to the atmosphere), or it ends up in a huge outdoor dump, where is would sit forever. Plastic doesn’t decompose like regular organic materials like wood or produce. It just sits there and further broken down…