The measurement is the total annual tons of waste deposited in the Tajiguas Landfill in comparison with the annual Santa Barbara County population. The population totals for Santa Barbara County are estimates that are made by the State of California. The solid waste totals before 1987 are estimates that were made by the Santa Barbara County Public Works Division. There were no scales at the landfill before 1987 so the only way to determine the total amount of waste was through an estimation process. The totals after 1987 are weighted totals that were calculated at the landfill.

This is an extremely important indicator because it gives us some idea of the size of the ecological footprint that Santa Barbara County is leaving on the environment. Evaluating the waste that is generated by the County gives us some indication of the condition that we are in and helps in determining the overall sustainability of our community. By evaluating the population and waste amounts together we can get an indicator on whether the community is moving towards or away from sustainability. The Tajiguas Landfill is the main waste depository for the County of Santa Barbara. Measuring the waste that is disposed there gives us a measurement on the overall resource consumption and waste production of the county. These are important concerns in relation to the overall sustainability of the community for three reasons:

1. Natural resources are the raw materials used to create manufactured goods required by the community.
2. Land used for disposing of waste material is a limited natural resource.
3. The local environment has a limited capacity to handle air and water pollution created by waste.

Although the population of Santa Barbara County continues to grow on an annual basis, the amount of waste that is disposed has leveled off around 250,000 tons. You can see by looking at the graph that the average has dropped significantly since 1988 when the average amount of waste was around 350,000 tons per year. This drop in overall waste is directly related to Assembly Bill 939, which was passed in 1989 and said that all landfills must reduce their annual amount of waste by 50 percent. Santa Barbara County also holds workshops to teach community members ways to reduce their total amount of waste and has also taken numerous steps to increase recycling among the population. Together these efforts to decrease waste have been fairly successful, but more is going to be needed to decrease the annual amount of waste if the population of Santa Barbara County is going to continue to grow.