Did you know that a fully loaded garbage truck can weigh more than 60,000 pounds? Here in the city of Rancho Cucamonga, the vast majority of our trash that these garbage trucks pick up is hauled somewhere between 25 and 35 miles to the Orange County landfill. Every day of the year, several of these trucks spend several hours wandering through the streets to collect our trash, and then haul it miles away to the nearest dump. Many people are rightfully concerned about finding ways to reduce our waste footprint, or the amount of trash that we produce and send to local landfills. However, one aspect of this footprint that is rarely taken into consideration is the enormous amount carbon emissions associated with the fleet of gas-guzzling garbage trucks that are used to haul our trash to the dump.

Below, we will take an in-depth look at three different ways that homeowners, business owners, and other residents of Rancho Cucamonga can reduce the carbon emissions associated with the process of transporting their junk to the landfill.

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Start a Backyard Compost Pile for Yard Waste and Kitchen Scraps

Amazingly, almost one-third of the municipal solid waste (MSW) that we produce each year is organic waste, including yard waste, kitchen scraps, leftover meals, and other types of discarded food. Yard waste alone, such as bagged leaves and fallen tree limbs is the third-largest component of municipal solid waste by weight, surpassed only by food waste and paper products.

When you send yard waste, kitchen scraps, and other types of organic waste to the landfill, you are taking up precious landfill space that is quickly filling up throughout southern California. Furthermore, most landfills are lined with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic to stop leakage of hazardous and toxic landfill waste. Though this can help to avoid groundwater and soil contamination, this plastic liner causes organic waste to decompose at a much slower rate.

As these organic materials such as dead leaves and kitchen scraps decompose in the presence of non-organic materials prevalent in landfills, methane gas is released in large quantities. Studies have confirmed that methane emissions are 84 times more effective trapping heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide within a 20 year time frame.

Furthermore, sending your organic waste to the landfill is like throwing money out the window. The leaves, tree limbs, and potato peels you usually throw away can easily be composted into a nutrient-rich organic fertilizer that you can later spread on your lawn and garden. American families collectively spend upwards of 40 billion dollars each year on taking care of their lawns. One recent study by Columbia University found that homeowners use at least ten times more pesticides and fertilizers per acre on their lawns as farmers do on their fields. Many of these organic chemicals cause serious health problems, while petroleum-based chemical fertilizers ruin topsoil. Composting your yard waste, kitchen scraps, and other types of organic waste can reduce the amount of money spent on chemical fertilizers, limit the water needs of your lawn and garden, and increase the fertility of your landscape.

By starting a small compost pile in your backyard for your organic waste, you can simultaneously reduce your waste footprint while creating a fertile amendment to help increase the fertility of your home or business. Furthermore, by composting your organic waste, you will also be drastically limiting at least a third of the waste (by weight) that you usually send to the landfill.

Reduce the Amount of Consumer Items you Purchase

Another simple and straightforward way to reduce your waste footprint is to simply limit the amount of consumer items that you purchase. Consider the following statistics:

• The average American home has upwards of 300,000 items.
• The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years.
• One out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage.
• The average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually. At the same time, the average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year.
• Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items due to our overly cluttered homes.
• Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods—in other words, items they do not need.

These statistics should make it clear that the vast majority of us simply have too many things in our homes. Instead of purchasing another non-essential item that will most likely be thrown away within the next year, limiting our consumer purchases is a great way to reduce the amount of stuff that eventually ends up getting hauled to the landfill.

Hire the Most Environmentally Friendly Junk Removal Company

No matter how much we reduce, reuse, and recycle, there are still going to be times in life when we need to get rid of junk that accumulates in our homes and businesses. If you find that your home is overly cluttered, or that your business no longer has any space or storage, hiring a junk removal company might be the most efficient way to get rid of your excess junk.

Unfortunately, many junk removal companies will simply haul the junk items they pick up directly to the nearest landfill. Though this may be an easy way to get rid of your excess clutter, it doesn’t help to reduce the serious problems affecting our region´s overburdened landfill systems.

Junk King Inland Empire is proud to be the top-rated junk removal company in San Bernardino County offering efficient, affordable, and environmentally friendly junk removal services for both residential and commercial clients, including people who live in Rancho Cucamonga.

After several years of operation, we have developed close relationships with dozens of recycling centers, thrift stores, non-profit organizations, and other interested parties to make sure that all your used junk is given every opportunity to be donated or recycled, instead of simply sent to the nearest landfill. In fact, we are able to recycle, donate, or repurpose around 60 percent of the junk that we pick up, and we are always looking for strategies to improve that number. We are able to help our residential and commercial clients get rid of regular trash, construction debris, household junk, yard waste, small and medium sized appliances, e-waste, furniture and virtually anything that is not classified as toxic waste in an environmentally friendly manner

How to Hire Junk King Inland Empire for all your Trash Removal Needs

For all of your junk removal needs in Rancho Cucamonga and other parts of San Bernardino County, simply give us a call at 1-888-888-JUNK or send us a text at 1-737-888-5865 and we can set up a time and date to come and help you get free up space in your home or business.

Once you do decide to work with us, one of our customer service representatives will help you schedule a time and date for our junk removal services. We work around your busy schedules, and all of our customers can pick a two-hour window on the day they need their junk to be picked up. Our Junk King team will call you 15-30 minutes before your scheduled pick up to make sure that you´re at home.

We believe in full transparency and are one of the few junk removal companies who offers free, on-site estimates.  You can also call us for a free quotation or send us a text with photos of the items you need removed. We´ll send you a free quote so that you can determine if our services are within your budget.

Besides offering the most competitive junk removal prices on the market, we are also proud to say that our customer service is second to none. We have a 5-star rating on Yelp and we can also guarantee to beat any written estimate.

Whether you are completely renovating your business or simply have some yard waste you need to get rid of, Junk King Inland Empire offers the most reliable, efficient, affordable, and environmentally friendly junk removal service for residents of Rancho Cucamonga. We are the pioneers of recycling based junk removal, and can help you reduce your environmental footprint by ensuring that your junk gets every opportunity to be recycled, upcycled, or donated. Give us a call at 1-888-888-JUNK, or book online today!