Risk Assessments - Home and Farm Environmental Assessments

Household Wastes: Preventing, Reusing, Recycling, and Composting

The issue: As the U.S. population increases, the amount of household wastes produced each year also rises. The U.S. is number one in waste produced, energy consumed, and use of the earth's natural resources. While the U.S. has only 6% of the world's population, it uses about 40 to 50% of the world's nonrenewable resources and produces an estimated 15 to 38% of the world's waste. Changing from a resource-consuming lifestyle to a resource-conserving one would help maintain natural resources and create less waste.

To see if you should obtain and complete one of these voluntary and confidential risk assessment packets, answer the following questions.

YES	NO		Risk Screening Questions
		1	Do you buy more than you can use and end up accumulating certain products?
		2	Do you fail to consider the products long term durability or its potential for reuse?
		3	Do you fail to recycle items that could be recycled?
		4	Do you fail to consider the amount of packaging an item has before you purchase it?
		5	Do you fail to reuse items that could be reused?
		6	Do you fail to compost yard or kitchen vegetable wastes?
		7	Do you burn trash on your property?
		8	Do you ever dump garbage somewhere on your property?
		9	Do you ever discard any hazardous wastes in a sewer system, septic system, or storm drain?

Answering yes to any of the questions indicates a potential risk to ground and surface water quality may exist on your property. If you answer yes to any of the questions, contact the Home*A*Syst/Farm*A*Syst office to obtain a complete assessment package on this topic at:

Chris Koehler, Extension Agent
WSU Cooperative Extension
Spokane County
222 North Havana
Spokane, Washington 99202-4799
509-477-2169 office
509-477-2087 fax
e-mail: Chris Koehler

For more information on this issue, contact your local WSU Cooperative Extension office locations or Conservation District.