Hello Fellow No-Impacters!
Recent events have compelled me to attempt to produce no more than 100 gallons of garbage over the coming year. You can read the full story here: http://open.salon.com/blog/the_almighty_beckster/2010/01/01/the_great_garbage_challenge_of_2010
Would anyone care to join me in this little undertaking? I could use some moral support!
This post was submitted by Rebecca.
OK… it’s now January 26th. I started on December 7th and so far there are about 3 grocery sacks worth of garbage in my 100 gallon can. Unless something changes here, I think this is gonna be a piece of cake!
Comment by Rebecca — January 26, 2010 @ 5:05 pm
Zowie - that’s pretty amazing. There likely isn’t much I can offer in advice. Avoiding all processed foods and going on a one year buy-nothing saving spree will help you along! Generally garbage is nothing but packaging
In my family our weakness is the treats that come packaged (spiced tofu, Tofurky processed stuff) and the convience foods given two working parents. We manage to keep it down to a bag of garbage every 4 to 6 weeks. The occasional great toy purge leaves us with things that we can’t Freecycle or pass to the Goodwill stores.
It would be interesting to know more particulars about what you’re trying to do. How many people? Just you, a couple, a family of 4? What sort of recycling do you have? Does this goal aim to reduce recycling too? I have friends who pat themselves on the back because they say that what they buy is recyclable - but they don’t get it - the first thing is to Reduce purchases, then Reuse, and lastly when it can’t be reused; only then Recycle. It’s very easy to live a life filling a recycling box weekly with canned foods!! But that’s not good either.
The best of luck. It’s a pity that the neighbours would not notice this. We thought about spending $10k to do something that the neihbours would notice - PV array on the roof, solar water heater - but PVs are not worth it unless you’re spending $25k+ and we have no south facing roof and a $3k solar water heater is insane if you only spend $80/yr heating water …
I like the idea of taking the average person and making them keep their garbage for a month or two!! Whey don’t they just change garbage pickup to monthly?
Comment by Eric — January 27, 2010 @ 7:23 am
Eric, you are a man after my own heart.
Let’s see… the garbage thing is just me and 3 cats. Although I swear that my boyfriend’s weekly visits make more trash than I do the rest of the time put together!
Sooo… I don’t buy any packaged foods. This is only partly due to concern for the environmeent and partly due to the fact that I suffer from multiple food allergies to herbs & spices as well as a whole host of other things. So if the ingredients say “spices” or “natural flavoring” it’s off the list! And that pretty much means all packaged foods are off the list!
I recycle… the municipal service in Denver offers single stream recycling and they take most things except for some plastics. I do end up with some yogurt containers that can’t be recycled, but I generally use those to freeze food or for storage of beans/rice and other dry goods. And I have to take the plastic bags to a separate facility. It’s amazing, I bring all of my own bags and containers to the store but still they end up appearing in my life!
I really want to try to reduce my recycling more. I’ve recently stopped using canned food of any kind except for emergencies. Once again, it’s only partly environmental and partly because of concerns about BPA. If you’re interested, you can read my crazy theory on that here: http://open.salon.com/blog/the_almighty_beckster/2009/12/28/bpa_can_it_cause_migraines_too
The main offender in terms of waste is the cats. It wasn’t so bad with one cat, but since 2 abandoned kittens adopted me in August the waste has gone up remarkably. We’ve switched to compostable kitty litter and that really helps, but the canned food is the main offender. I’ve been reading about making home made cat food, but it’s quite tricky because if you screw up on getting them the right mix of nutrients it can kill them. So for the moment we just recycle a lot of cat food cans. I even tried switching to the larger cans, but… after writing to all of the catfood companies I determined that the larger cans use BPA - which has been linked to hyper-thyroid disease in cats and since I lost one to that a few years ago I really don’t want to risk that!
Still, it takes my about 6 weeks to fill the recycling bin, and that usually includes a fair amount of stuff salvaged from my neighbor’s garbage.
At the moment Denver has municipal composting, but it’s going away in March because of budget cuts. I’ve been working with my city council reps to try to save it… I’m not sure if I will succeed, but at least I’m injecting some creative thinking into the decision making process.
If that goes away then I’ll have to figure out how to deal with a few things… I already compost all of my food scraps and yard waste, but some things are hard to do on your own… like weeds (you don’t want to spread the seeds around) big sticks (I may have to borrow my dad’s shreader even though it’s gas powered) and of course leftover catfood! Maybe worms for the catfood… can you feed worms meat? I don’t eat meat myself so it’s not an issue for me, just the cats.
OK… I’m now descending into blathering, thanks again for reading and if you have other ideas I’m all ears!
Comment by Rebecca — January 27, 2010 @ 4:54 pm
Yea - the cats could be a boat anchor! I’m a farm boy - cats belong in the barn!
Cities compost kitty litter. I’m not sure what’s in it (absorbent materials and what else?) or if you want to try composting!
Having lived on a farm you get used to composting all animal waste. Humans are animals and The Humanure Handbook (free online) covers how to compost animal waste safely (sewage treatment plants are not it!).
We acquired a budgy in the spring. We never found it’s home and now it’s happily making garbage for us - more so if the kids give it their homework paper - it loves turning it into chads. We leave it free but that forces one to choose between plants and anything on the walls OR the bird. That darn thing will destroy plants, destroy all paper on the kids “wall of art”, go after poles holding up quilts and stipple on the ceiling ….
Last night I was reminded of a quaint European trick - make the store and mfg take back their wrapping! You’d think that would quickly make them deal with it.
Today marks the passing of Howard Zinn - an amazing person.
Comment by Eric — January 28, 2010 @ 1:10 pm