Plastic is also a big problem.
Newspapers alone may take up as much as 13 percent of the space in American landfills. A year's worth of copies of the New York Times has been estimated to be equivalent in volume to 18,660 crushed aluminum cans or 14,969 flattened Big Mac clamshells. Today there are 59 million personal computers in the United States with printers attached. Where the creation of paper waste is concerned, technology is proving to be not so much a contraceptive as a fertility drug. Unquestionably, a larger number of physical objects are made of plastic today than were in 1970, or 1950.