Earth Day Woe: 'Couch Abandonment'

(April 22) -- You stained it with tears while watching "All My Children."

It was your host when you made some of your best armchair quarterback calls. Turn out the lights, shine a black light on it and it'll reveal what else you did on it. Full of lost coins, popcorn kernels, guys' nights out and family nights in, it's now the object of your rejection.

All you want to do is abandon it.

More than 10 million Americans this year have or plan to discard a couch or other large piece of furniture instead of recycling or reselling it when they move.

When you consider the average size of a large piece of furniture, that's cubic feet of waste equivalent to more than 12 Empire State Buildings added to landfills each year, according to a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by AmericanListed.com, a free, Craigslist-like online classified-advertisement website.

It's a disturbing Earth Day statistic. It's couch abandonment, pure and simple.

"Moving may be a hectic time, but people need to realize that the furniture they discard adds up and hurts our environment," said Thomas Westling, president of AmericanListed.com. "This Earth Day, we want to remind people that there are easy ways to recycle furniture," he added.

Sit on it, until you can recycle it.