America is the #1 nation on the planet, being the best at everything from rock n’ roll to protecting (and exporting) our freedoms. While this “fact” carries with it much positive reinforcement, be it when we win Olympic gold or prove victorious against an armed foe, it also has some negative drawbacks.

For while America is #1 in the world at producing innovators, it’s also #1 at producing piles of trash. Across the United States, in almost every state in the union, there are almost 3,500 landfills dedicated to storing our mountains of garbage. We might be only 5% of the world’s population, but we produce 40% of the world’s trash. For most of the national populace, especially overworked college students like us, these factoids about trash are ones that are out of sight and out of mind.

Yet while most of the nation (and the world) is fretting about the hot-button issues of our generation, like climate change, income inequality, and how ever to blot out the 2016 election, I would like to humbly bring up a hidden problem that is not only important but one that everyone (including college kids) can work on solving right now.  That problem, of course, is the amount of trash we produce; with this important message in mind, we can easily learn how to reduce current amounts of waste so as to produce less of it.

When we throw away our garbage, be it on a Friday night at C-Shop or in our own homes, we often don’t wonder nor worry about where it goes. Most of our trash goes from the garbage bin directly to the dumpster, from which it finds a landfill somewhere out of smelling range. To give a visual image of how these landfills, the highest point of Ohio’s Hamilton County isn’t a mountain, but a landfill that rises 1,000 feet above sea level. 30% of garbage in such Everests of waste is, according to the EPA, comprised of organic material. In layman terms, that’s things like uneaten food. Also in the millions of pounds of garbage we discard per year is enough aluminum to, according to the University of Southern Indiana, rebuild the entire American commercial airline fleet four times over. It seems most of our waste isn’t waste at all, but simply things that we can’t be bothered to re-use.

While it should be clear that we produce too much waste, many still aren’t convinced this is a problem. After all, trash isn’t clogging rivers anymore in the US, and there are plenty of recycling centers in the United States to help mitigate waste. However, the mountains of rubbish we continue to produce poisons our social lives just as much as they poisoned our natural preserves.

We consume resources at a phenomenally wasteful rate, and this seems to have created a mindset characterized by spoiled excess. It’s been a long time since Americans had to count every dime and dollar that left their households, with most of us now used to everything we ever (and never) need a simple few mouse clicks away. We trample over each other on Black Fridays, and spend lots of time in return lines at Walmart after Christmas day. If the gift or item can’t be returned, out to the dumpster it goes.

We’re used to buying up more than we need, and getting rid of anything we don’t want. For closer analysis, take a trip to the local landfill to witness the sheer number of perfect products just thrown away. Alternatively, just watch the dozens of refrigerators and furniture pieces that get chucked out of dorms on move-out day.

This problem of producing excess goods and then wasting most of them isn’t hard to solve; in fact, it might just be most enjoyable to address. For starters, two-thirds of all household waste is compostable; that is to say, most of the trash our homes produce can be composted into the soils of our gardens and our farms. So, when you’re back home for break, take an unused container and store any uneaten food in it. Try to donate it to a local farmer, or if that doesn’t pan out, make your own garden to put the compost in.

For campus-wide attempts at cutting down trash, ensure that all the aluminum cans used wind up in a recycling bin. When shopping, try to buy a reusable bag. Actions like this don’t matter on an individual level, but when groups of people act, it starts to make an impact. Furthermore, when you take the trash out, make sure it goes in a waste bin; non-recyclable products that are carelessly thrown in a recycling bin result in a charge to the school and reduce the efficiency of recycling programs.

So the next time you find yourself at a trash can, try to minimize the amount of goods put in the trash bin, and help make America great again not in trash produced but in amount of “waste” reused.