Waste Not

For the most part when people are d one with their stuff, they just throw it away. Where is this away? What happens to it?

Unfortunately, away doesn’t exist.  All of our waste just doesn’t disappear, and zero impact is impossible. For the most part, our waste ends up in landfills or gets recycled.  According to the EPA, the average American produces 4.4 pounds of garbage a day, 30 pounds a week, and about 1,600 pounds a year! That’s a lot of TRASH!!! For my assignment I kept track of my trash and looked for ways to reduce it. 

For the first three day period:

Trash:

3 Styrofoam containers

1 chili packet

1 soy sauce

2 pairs of chopsticks

1 plastic fork

1 pepper packet

6 napkins

1 plastic food container

Recycled:

4 beer bottles

2 receipts

1 toilet paper roll

1 plastic bag

6 pages of paper

3 plastic bags

Compost:

5 eggshells

2 bell pepper tops

3 citrus peels

2 bananas peels

1 fruit peel

A little Buck Choy trimmings

1 Onion skin 

I wasted about 16 items, at an estimation of 1-2 lbs. Much of it was from eating out, it consisted of Styrofoam and dining ware. I recently moved to Riverside, and I was unaware that Styrofoam could be recycled at the curb; in Fontana, they don’t recycle it and this was a cool find.

I found various strategies to reduce my waste, some of which I already do. Currently, I try keep my waste levels down and I try to be conscious of all of my stuff; I already do my own composting, have a canteen and reusable dining ware, and use a handkerchief to dry my hands. I want to take it further and try to reduce my waste as much as possible by: buy things with less packaging, remove my name from mailing lists, don’t eat out as much, take my own reusable to go food container to food joints, and to check items for recyclability before buying.

The next 3 days:

Compost:

5 eggs

ginger peels

2 napkins

6 orange peels

3 bananas

Onion peels

Pepper stem

2 eggplant cuttings

2 avocado pits and peels

2 or 3 wilted cabbage leaves

Trash:

1 Soymilk Container

1 pair of chopsticks with wrapper

1 napkin

1 pieces of sushi

3 green mussel shells

Recycled:

3 Beer bottles

2 paper plates

1 Styrofoam

1 plastic container

2 receipts

1 glass honey jar

I wasted 7 items on the next 3day period!!!! I was able to cut my waste by more than half. Much of it was due to, eating out less and less food packaging. I joined a CSA, and my box of produce eliminated much of my food packaging waste and it forced me to eat out less. It was hard to keep things out of the trash, some things were non-recyclable or it was out of my hands. The only time I did go out and eat, the server took my plate before I could eat that last piece!!!!! It was cool though cause I was stuffed from all you can eat, and I wasn’t able to take all the scraps waste with me. Much of our foods come in non-recyclable containers, my soymilk container was made of paper mashed with plastic, and it was not able recyclable. I also saved my honey jar to reuse for future use.

Which of these trash-reducing strategies would I continue? I have not gotten around to it yet, but I wanted to have my name removed from the junk mail list, take my own food container when I take food to go, and I want to keep using a CSA to buy majority of my produce.