Have you ever thought about what you throw out every day? What makes up the bulk (by weight) of our trash? Food waste? Plastic? Glass? Perhaps by paying careful attention to a week’s worth of trash, we can better understand where we can make improvements in our lives.
Zero waste is an amazing goal, but it would be very difficult to achieve for many of us. Perhaps it is because we live somewhere without a recycling program, we need medication that comes in wasteful packaging, or we just really like chocolate bars! Don’t let any of those discourage you from making changes in other areas of your life – every little bit helps.
Here is a week of waste produced by a family of three living in the Caribbean:
Day 1: Compost is King
The first day got off to a great start – the vast majority of dinner waste was compostable, with a small amount of recyclable waste, and only one item (the grated cheese packet) destined for the trash. Perhaps, if single use plastic bags were no longer available to buy, that resealable cheese bag would be a prized commodity!
Day 2: Amazon is my Weakness
My personal weakness is Amazon – I have amazon prime (Free Shipping!)
Day 3: Community Composting
Not everyone has space to compost, so my neighbor, who lives in an apartment, brings about 5kg of compost weekly. She keeps it in the fridge to avoid smells or fruit-flies. Before I started large-scale composting, my home tumbler (YIMBY tumbler on Amazon) was plenty big enough to accommodate the waste from both households AND my office.
Day 4: Dinner Waste
A lot of today’s food packaging can’t be recycled. Conventional meat production alone is harmful to the environment, but add the packaging to get it safely to the consumer and it is even worse. Choosing legumes and vegetables more often could go a long way to reduce your trash. Many loose vegetables are delivered in cardboard boxes. Does your supermarket recycle or compost those boxes? It all adds up to so much!
Day 5: Repair not Replace
When electronics get old, manufacturers try to convince us to upgrade to the latest and greatest model. However, many items can get repaired for a fraction of the cost and environmental impact. Thanks to youtube, it is also easier than ever to make many simple hardware swaps. Today the PUR water pitcher also needed a new filter. I fill up my Kleen Kanteen at least twice a day, so that is up to 180 plastic bottles avoided.
Day 6: Composting at the Office
I leave a small compost bin on the kitchenette counter at work to collect coffee grounds and other organic waste. This helps keep the work garbage bin dry and odor free, and gives my garden more compost! At first my colleagues thought it was a bit odd, but now they collect compost (and recycling!) even when I am not in the office. It just takes small steps to make a big change.
Day 7: Convenience foods are Inconvenient (To the Planet)!
More than half of today’s trash is made up of convenience food packaging. Between cookies, chocolate, and school lunch snacks, convenience food (often junk food!) is expensive, unhealthy, and wasteful. I’m not perfect: with a busy lifestyle, sometimes convenience wins. Still, it is worth looking at your weaknesses and learning from them. Perhaps this weekend I should bake some cookies for the week ahead!
Week’s Totals
By the end of the week, my trash bin (2.5kg) and recycling bin (1.5kg) were both half full. Because the trash is light, dry, and relatively odor free, I use 8 gallon certified home compostable garbage bags. If your garbage can’t fly out of the truck on the way to the dump you could even just line the bin with newspaper! (Alas, my neighborhood has an open skip, so bagged garbage is a requirement)
The compost bin is ready for more, as the 10kg of organic waste has already reduced to half its original volume.
Not including outside inputs:
47% of our household waste was composted
35% went to the landfill
18% was recycled
We averaged 1kg of waste total per day, with 3 household members this puts us at just over .3 kg per person.
Keep in mind, that this doesn’t include the waste we generate outside the home – all those boxes that the supermarket disposes of, cars, electronics, and clothes at the end of their life… If you add it all up, it is easily to see how wealthy areas in the developed world produce up to 5kg per person per day. High waste production is a reliable sign of affluence.
It is a good start, but I want to do better! This might seem like a silly exercise, but I have learnt a lot about areas where I can make improvements.
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