Here’s what happens the next time that you toss a Diet Coke can in the trash can in your kitchen instead of taking the extra time to put it in a recycling bin, you lazy cow. The can gets wrapped up along with the rest of the trash in what is likely a 0.9 mm-thick polyethylene bag that you will eventually take to your trash can (which, ironically, is probably located beside your recycling bin). In a few days, a truck that gets an average of 2.8 miles per gallon will come by and pick up your bags of trash, including that Diet Coke can and take it to a dump, where it will be added to the other 249.6 million tons of municipal waste generated that year in the U.S. Plowed into a mass grave, the bag containing the Diet Coke can will be backfilled and left buried, where it will take around 100 years to degrade.