Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in The United States: Facts and Figures for 2007

This report by the Environmental Protection Agency reports that Americans generated about 254 million tons of trash and recycled and composted 85 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 33.4 percent recycling rate (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). On average, we recycled and composted 1.5 pounds of our individual waste generation of 4.6 pounds per person per day.