Americans generate somewhere between 300 to 400 million tons of garbage every year. Out of environmental concerns for how burning affects air quality, most solid waste ends up in landfills. Chances are you live within 10-20 miles of a landfill, and if your community is anything like most in the United States, your municipal government is running into a real problem: the landfills are filling up, and better solutions are needed.
The amount of waste generated by the average person has tripled since 1960 in America, which has the highest amount of waste generated per person of any country, at an average of 4.6 pounds per day. In fact, only around 1/10 of solid garbage in the United States is recycled each year. Believe it or not, this statistic has improved over years past, but we still have a long way to go.
Recycling helps alleviate this issue the most, of course, but there are other things that can be done to keep solid objects out of landfills. One of these has to do with what to do with items after a fire or flood. In the past, insurance companies and homeowners would try to restore sentimental items from a fire or flood-damaged home, but would choose to toss the remainder of soot- and mold-covered items in the garbage, meaning that after a major event such as the California wildfires or the floods following a hurricane like Harvey, you would likely see a huge influx of household items entering local landfills. In fact, that’s exactly what happened after Hurricane Harvey.
It’s clear to see that this trend is insupportable in the long run. So, what’s the answer?
Refurbish, not throw away
When household items get damaged in a fire or flooding, it can seem like there is no recourse but to toss them out into the nearest dumpster. Soot or mold damage can seem intractable and impossible to remove. But there is a way to choose to refurbish these items instead of throwing them away. Refurbishing is a choice that keeps items out of landfills and saves both money and time. Cleaning and restoring items by hand might take many hours of hard work, with less than satisfactory results in many cases. Yet there is another way that involves a cutting-edge cleaning technology: ultrasonic cleaning.
Ultrasonic cleaning to the rescue
Ultrasonic cleaning uses the power of high-frequency sound to clean objects. When these sound waves pass through a liquid medium and strike against an object immersed in that liquid, they produce millions of microscopic bubbles. These bubbles collapse almost as soon as they’re formed through a physical phenomenon known as cavitation, releasing tiny but intense jets of energy when they do. These energy bursts dislodge grime and contaminants from every surface of an object, and in combination with a detergent solution, form a powerful cleaning force unlike any other. Not only is ultrasonic cleaning thorough and powerful, but also gentle, which means it can often even clean Grandma’s china without damaging it.
The bottom line: ultrasonic cleaning allows restoration companies to work in tandem with homeowners and insurance companies to clean damaged items after a disaster, restoring them to the condition they were in before the disaster, and sometimes even better. Ultrasonic cleaning creates a win-win scenario for everyone—the homeowner gets their original items back and don’t have to spend time replacing them, the insurance company doesn’t have to write a bigger check to replace all damaged items, and the rest of us will be thankful that the many items will not have to go to landfills, helping keep the earth greener than it was before.
Want to know more about how ultrasonic cleaners can assist you with refurbishing damaged items rather than throwing them away? Call one of our ultrasonic experts at Omegasonics at 888-989-5560 or email us at . You can also get in touch with us by filling out our online contact form.
