90% Reduction: Garbage

[This was originally posted Aug 28, 2007 on my Sundrop Jewelry blog. I will be starting a series of updates soon, and figured the original posts should be available here too.]

Starting Point: Garbage

How can we throw away less stuff? We can re-use and recycle all we want, but fundamentally it is necessary to reduce the junk that comes into our house.

• American average:
       4.5 pounds/person/day
• 90% reduction for 2 people:
       0.9 pounds/day
• Our current trash:
       1.69 pounds/day, or
       19% of the average

In 21 days we threw away 35.4 lbs of trash, and this seemed to be a normal amount for us. We recycle (no pickup, but I found a recycling bin nearby). However, since we sold the car, taking the recycling to the bin has become a much more difficult proposition (we have to move everything via relatively small bicycle baskets). We might have to stop recycling bulky cardboard boxes, but I’m still intending to recycle the items that are most beneficial for their bulk: aluminium cans and glass.


Apparently, the
eyeball monster
in the Death Star
trash compactor has
a name: Dianoga.
Who knew? I am trying to reduce our paper trash (mostly mail) via paperless billing and signing up for don’t-send-me-all-this-
junk-I-never-look-at lists. Plastic trash is a problem: light and bulky, it is difficult to bike it to the recycling bin. It is getting very difficult to buy even fresh, whole foods without a large amount of plastic packaging – e.g. Costco is selling much of it’s fruit in plastic clamshell packaging. At least farmer’s markets don’t use them. A more insidious problem with plastic is that a large portion of it isn’t recycleable (but the guidelines at our bin don’t list the numbers they recycle, just descriptions – what’s the point of the numbers then?!) and many recycleable items are not worth recycling (and get landfilled even though it went to the recycling center) because the sorting labor costs too much.

We don’t compost (we live in a condo), but I have considered starting a worm bin.