Waste we produce is thrown "away". The thing is, there is no "Away". You throw it in the trash, and it goes to a garbage dump. It is there for years, and years to come. Sometimes, it even goes into the ocean, which then kills the fish that mistakes it for food. Did you know that liquids that are in a dump are toxic, and can seep into the soil around it? when this happens, it is called leachate. These toxic materials are what can make us sick, and they can be in our water! That doesn't sound fun, does it? That is why Zero Waste is so important. About 300 million pounds of plastic is produced each year. About half of that is single-use. More than 8 million tons of plastic waste is dumped into the oceans every year. About 1/3 of our food is wasted. That's about 1.3 billion tons of food. About 18 million tons of toxic waste has been thrown out this year as of January 2019.