Math Project

I'm doing a math project where I have to quantitatively analyze something. I chose to do my project on United States municipal solid waste. I have tons of data that I have to format and present in an interesting way, and it's really tedious. Here's some of what I got:

How much of Portland's land area would a years worth of US garbage cover (including recycling and compost)?

Approximately 41.38% at a height of 1 cubic yard

How many landfills are there in the United States?

13,091

How many landfills per settlement (city, town, township, etc, excluding groupings such as counties)?

71 per hundred

Approximately how much total MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) has been generated in the last 45 years?

9,245,015,000 tons

How much of Portland's land area would 46 years of US produced MSW cover?

At 1,500 lbs/cubic yard, 9,245,015,000 tons, 2000 lbs/ton, 3,097,600 sq. yd./sq. mi.:
9,245,015,000 tons * 2000 lbs = 18,490,030,000,000 lbs
18,490,030,000,000 lbs / 1500 lbs/cu. yd. = 12,326,686,666.667 cu. yds.
12,326,686,666.667 sq. yds. / 3,097,600 sq. yd./sq. mi. = 3,979.431 sq. mi.

Portland has a total land area of approximately 145 sq. mi., so:
3,979.431 sq. mi. / 145 sq. mi. = 27.444 times the land mass of Portland at one yard height. This means that Portland could be completely covered in garbage stacked 82.3 feet high at 3 ft/yd. That's almost five times the average height of a full-grown giraffe.

I wrote a computer program to figure out some figures:

Waste from 1960-2005 (Tons):
1960: 88,120,000
1961 – 1970: 1,062,370,000
1971 – 1980: 1,378,790,000
1981 – 1990: 1,811,035,000
1991 – 1995: 1,051,520,000
1996 – 1999: 899,050,000
2000: 231,960,000
2001: 229,230,000
2002-2005: 971,345,000
------------------------------
9,245,015,000

That's nine billion tons of trash (about 18.5 trillion pounds) of trash over the last 45 years!

The Blogger blog update interface sucks, btw.