Let’s face it: we throw away too much stuff. I don’t think I’ll get any argument there. Disposable products, packaging, electronics that seem to define planned obsolescence, it all ends up in the landfill.
Shop Smart. The first and most obvious way to stop throwing away so much trash is to stop bringing trash into your house in the first place. If it has a package, consider other alternatives. Can you make it yourself (bread, ice)? Can you choose a different product with better packaging (loose tomatoes instead of those in plastic packages, spaghetti sauce in glass rather than plastic)? Can you do without or get it second hand?
Compost. If you’re not composting yet, consider this little challenge the nudge you need to do so. Divert your kitchen scraps from the landfill, make garden gold. You can compost if you’re lazy. You can compost with worms. You can compost with your blender. Figure out what works and do it.
Donate items you don’t need. I once worked for a woman who threw the clothes her daughter outgrew away. I doubt anyone here is doing that, but think about what you toss. The local preschool might be able to use some of those obscure packages in craft projects. Your friend with a chicken might appreciate your egg cartons.
Cook from scratch. Buying a pre-made salad at the deli counter is fast, but leaves you with the hard plastic clam shell packaging to throw away. Instead, buy a head of lettuce, use your cloth produce bags and top with whatever veggies are in season.
Recycle. In my mind, it’s more important to reduce the amount of recyclable items that we use first, but if you must use them then please recycle.
In this household, we fill about one kitchen trash can a week. It’s primarily filled with plastic: packaging from our local butcher shop, bread wrappers, tortilla packaging). I’m sure that’s a lot less than some of you, and more than others. In any case, it makes me cringe every time we fling our trash over the edge at the transfer station. One thing I can do is start pre-ordering my beef. If I order in advance, they’ll package it in butcher paper for me. Yes, still coated, but better than straight plastic. And I can get back to baking our own bread. I’m certainly not aspiring to zero-waste like this family, but less trash? Absolutely.
So. Will you come clean and tell us how many bags of trash you go through a week? And what are you willing to do to reduce that amount?
Photo: Flickr user by woodleywonderworks
We also have one rubbish bags a week, sometimes two. Its my resolution this year to cut down on our waste. Thanks for the tips.
You’re welcome! And welcome to the club.
This is a great challenge! I’m looking forward to thinking more about the packaging we throw away. Lately I’ve been hankering to get cloth produce bags, so maybe this will be the excuse I need to break out my never-before-used sewing machine. We also use about one kitchen garbage bag per week; often it contains meat scraps, and I would love to get ideas for how to cut down on the smell. I know I can cover it with baking soda, but that feels wasteful.
Justine @The Lone Home Ranger recently posted..satisfy your unsweet tooth
Justine, a couple of thoughts. If you have chickens, they LOVE meat scraps. If you have outdoor space, you can dig a hole and bury the meat scraps and let the worms dispose of it.
And yes, those bags are SO easy. Do it!
Do you have friends with dogs? Because if I had a friend or neighbor who gave me meat scraps for my dogs, I’d be very happy and so would my dogs… If you kept the meat scraps in a covered container in the fridge or freezer until it was time to give them away (max a week in the fridge, months in the freezer), you wouldn’t have any smell, because they wouldn’t spoil, would they?
I bake “cookies” for my dogs out of scraps and leftover vegetables and grease/fats from roasted or sauteed meats — I chop everything up, add a handful of nutritional yeast and a little water, then mix in enough flour/oats to make a soft dough to pat out thinly on a cookie sheet and then baked at 325 or so (I cut this into squares half-way through the baking, turn them all over when brownish, and leave in the oven with the pilot light on to dry out overnight). Uses up leftovers and trimmings and used grease, makes for happy and well-behaved dogs…
Do you have friends with dogs? Because if I had a friend or neighbor who gave me meat scraps for my dogs, I’d be very happy and so would my dogs… If you kept the meat scraps in a covered container in the fridge or freezer until it was time to give them away (max a week in the fridge, months in the freezer), you wouldn’t have any smell, because they wouldn’t spoil, would they?
I bake “cookies” for my dogs out of scraps and leftover vegetables and grease/fats from roasted or sauteed meats — I chop everything up, add a handful of nutritional yeast and a little water, then mix in enough flour/oats to make a soft dough to pat out thinly on a cookie sheet and then baked at 325 or so (I cut this into squares half-way through the baking, turn them all over when brownish, and leave in the oven with the pilot light on to dry out overnight). Uses up leftovers and trimmings and used grease, makes for happy and well-behaved dogs…
We fill one kitchen trash can every 4-6 weeks. With composting, recycling and very little pre-packaged food, we just don’t have much to throw away. We keep the large kitchen trash can out in the garage and have double teeny tiny built in trash cans in the kitchen behind a drawer face that has containers that can use grocery store bags as a liner, if you are so inclined. The front one we use for trash, the back one we use for paper/cardboard recycling.
We have a sealing compost container on the kitchen counter that we empty into the compost as needed-usually every day. Other recycling items are taken out to the recycling bins as they are cleaned and made ready.
Melanie @ Frugal Kiwi recently posted..Building a Herb Spiral
Thanks for chatting with me on Facebook about this. It sounds like your built in cans are roughly the same size as the office can we use. Maybe a bit smaller.
This is a great post! We took the compost plunge about a year and a half ago, and I’m thrilled with how much it reduced our trash and enhanced our garden.
We also recycle a TON, though I’m still concerned that not all of it actually gets recycled and that some of the recycling processes are wasteful.
Colleen recently posted..The Week that Work Ate
Colleen, I feel the same way about recycling. We recycle LOTS but sometimes I wonder if the fuel needed to ship it around *really makes it a better option. That’s why I’m working so hard to eliminate even the items that I can recycle by making my own food stuffs.
I’m in!
We are down to one large kitchen bag a week sometimes just under a week. Would love it to be less! Our town has easy recycling and provides a compost bin for home use.
@noodlegirl It makes such a difference to get the compostable stuff out of the trash, doesn’t it?
The earlier conversation on Facebook has a number of other ideas, too: http://www.facebook.com/attainablesustainable/posts/336486986382607?notif_t=feed_comment
wow, using a blender is a great idea!Admirable camera work too.
we have one to one-and-a-half kitchen trash bags of rubbish a week… all of our paper trash we burn (sometimes this fire is used to kill a tree stump for double duty), but we’re lucky enough to live in the country where we can do that (it’s our “shredder” for paper info, too). we recycle cans, glass, and plastic bottles (we do NOT buy water, thank you). our “composting” is done by tossing the compostables into the top of the gully, where they break down or feed wildlife, and when it rains the good stuff washes down the whole gully where we have planted oodles of food: bananas, sugar cane, taro, and other stuff. where do you order your meat from, Kris? I’m in Hilo, so I want to know!
@bkrnurs Aloha! When you started mentioning gullies, bananas, and sugar cane I thought you might be nearby. I get my meat from JJ’s in Honoka‘a. I’m nearby, so just pick it up at the store, but they do once a week deliveries to Hilo (and Kona) I believe.
We started composting again this month, after a few-month hiatus. It makes a HUGE difference in our outgoing garbage. I’ve also been reusing a lot more things for arts/crafts and in prep for seeds/gardening. I feel good about the liitle things I can do in my kitchen to help make a difference
Jasmin Pike: Bravo! Little steps DO make a difference!
One, if that, with three people. And I cook…
We live in Portland, OR – we only have garbage service every other week, and our family of 6 uses a microcan (that’s about 3 bags of garbage/month, thanks to cloth diapers and whole, unprocessed foods (less packaging). All food waste is composted or fed to the poultryl, and our 40 gal recycle can is filled weekly.