Tell City Council that you want a Zero Waste New Orleans

No Waste NOLA is asking the New Orleans City Council to develop a plan to become a Zero Waste community, because our trash is making us sick, and causing LOTS of other serious problems too. Support a cleaner, healthier community by telling the city council to pass a resolution committing to reducing waste in New Orleans!

In the U.S., on average, each person produces 1609 pounds of trash a year. So, with about 378,175 people in New Orleans, that means as we are sending 304,241 TONS of trash to our local landfills each year. Cigarette butts take up to 5 years to decompose. Glass bottles last for 1,000 years, - yet New Orleans has very limited glass recycling. Think about all that trash just piling up in our dumps!

As trash piles up and decomposes, it can cause air, ground and water pollution that causes a wide range of irritations and illness for people and animals - from asthma to allergies, and even cancer.

Trash is also a major contributor to climate change. As certain gases escape from decomposing trash, they surround our planet, stopping heat from escaping and preventing the earth from cooling down as it should. Over time, this can increase temperatures and change our climate.

Hotter weather means more pests as well - like mosquitoes and ticks - that can infect us and our pets with Lyme disease, Zika virus, and the West Nile virus. When it’s hot, cockroaches breed more often too – so as temperatures rise, so will our roach population! Expect more creepy crawlies on our streets and in our homes – yuck!

Increasing temperatures change weather patterns as well. When weather becomes erratic, we experience severe events like hurricanes, floods, and super storms.

For all these reasons, and so much more (link to fact sheet here) – we need to be better about reducing waste! Ask our City Council to protect our health, pets and planet by committing to a future with less trash and other waste!