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The Good, the Bad and the Stinky
Our border collie Kiara is waiting to help drag the trash bins to the street... She helps by watching.
So here's a first thought about carrying my family's trash around for two weeks: It stinks! At least I expect it will after a couple of days...
But in the service of Marketplace — and you, dear listener — I'm launching the experiment this weekend. This is something of an opening salvo for a project American Public Media shows have been working on all year. It's called Consumed, and it explores whether our consumer culture is sustainable. The series launches this fall.
The EPA says Americans generated 245.7 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2005. That's 20 percent more than what we tossed away in 1990, and 102 percent more than what we generated in 1970. Yuck.
But is it a crisis? Garbage critics say we're going to run out of places to put it, and that even if we had enough space, all we're doing is encouraging consumption. Others argue the landfill issue has been greatly improved because of technology — it's not the old city dump anymore.
Either way, there's no debate that we all use, and waste, all kinds of natural resources. We chuck things into the garbage can without a second thought. So in the interest of shining at least one small light on the problem, I'll be airing my dirty garbage bags in public. It should give me a very personal — and gross — appreciation for what my family's consumption is doing do the planet.
I do have some self-imposed restrictions, though. I will not be bringing my trash bags into restaurants. And I won't be carrying them around in malls, where I could be mistaken for Winona Ryder. I also will not be including our dog and cat poo because of the potential health risks. And I will be using far more Ziploc-type bags — yes, more plastic — than I usually do when tossing out smelly food scraps. Otherwise, my colleagues might ban me from the newsroom.
What we're going for here is a concept called Zero Waste. And there are all kinds of Web sites, like Zero Waste and Zero Waste America, devoted to the idea that you can get yourself to the point where you send no garbage to the landfill. In my household, we recycle probably 80 to 90 percent of the glass, paper and plastic we use. And I make every effort to feed my compost bin with all my vegetable scraps, paper towels and garden detritus. But what about things like chicken bones? Or fish skins? Or (used) kitty litter? Maybe someone out there has some answers for me...
For the most part, I think we're already on the right track — forced there (in a good way) by my city, Pasadena. I mentioned our recycling efforts, and among our several trash bins the green-topped one is the smallest. That's our bin for household trash that isn't recycling (blue) or yard waste (black).
In Pasadena, we are charged by the size of our garbage container. Our family uses the smallest trash bin available, 32 gallons, for which we're charged $12.08 per month. There is no charge for the recycling and yard bins of any size. That's a great incentive to cut back on the amount of trash we generate, but we'll see if we can do even better.
Want to join me? You don't have to do it for two weeks... Try it for a day or two. And click on the "comment" button below to share your experiences — the good, the bad and the stinky.
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Don't believe those guys who tell you landfills are OK. If you live in a big city you are very much removed from them. Regulations and controls are inconsistent from state to state. Here on the East Coast trash haulers are cruising southern states trying to get rural and poor counties to take humongous amounts of trash from everywhere on the east coast. There is a plastic liner but it will eventually fail, that's what the EPA says. Trash is piled up at the rate of 5k tons a day for 20 to 30 years. Plastic is not going to contain that. Leachate (juice) forms in the bottom and has to be siphoned off and removed. Methane (greenhouse gas) is formed as well. It is combustible and fire departments have to put out fires routinely. These landfills take sludge (what's left over when sewage is treated in a water treatment plant (matches the baby diapers). Believe me you don't want one of these around in your neighborhood. Thanks for the consciousness raising, Tess.
Hi Tess,
This challenge is good for suburban families who spend more time at home, but what about families in urban areas who dine out regularly? Does having a restaurant or coffee shop (serving with earthenware) dispose of our waste produce less of it? Granted it may not be cost-effective for most of us to do this but we are essentially paying with the increase garbage for the convenience of prepackaged foods and disposable consumables that wasn't available in 1970. And while movements existed then and still do to reduce the need for the disposable lifestyle, the alternative is a labor intensive homelife of scratch-based cooking, gardening, etc.
Now, I'm a big fan of cooking at home, recycling, reuse of every packing material I can't avoid, but I see problems scaling my habits to the larger population:
1. A less convenient, more garbage-free lifestyle doesn't lend itself well to those with ambition who need the extra time to hon their career or business.
2. A more garbage-conscious society will certainly tank my retirement account which depends on the population consuming more and more.
3. Less garbages discourages the development of new technology or industries for dealing with the problem which also effects my retirement account.
To meaningfully reduce garbage in our society means changing our behavior in a fundamental way. It's not clear to me we are prepared to even after being made aware of how much garbage we generate by carrying it around with us.
-Brent
Hi Tess,
Well, I have taken your trash challenge. I started carrying around my trash on Saturday after your show aired. Our trash day is Wednesday, however, so I actually have one week's worth of trash with me now.
I am feeling pretty good so far about the small amount of trash that my wife and I have produced over the past week. I confess, as a person in the waste/recycling industry I was little nervous about how much we would produce at home. I have been encouraging people to reduce, reuse and recycle for a long time, but I never actually measured my own effectiveness.
So far, I was surprised to find that we use alot of paper towels. Perhaps we could switch to cloth rags and napkins. Such a switch would result in additional laundry. Laundry requires water, involves detergent and creates wastewater that, in our case, is sewered and ultimately handled at a wastewater treatment plant. In places like Southern California water usage and the disposal of sludge from wastewater plants is as critical an issue as waste disposal. Consequently, from a sustainability standpoint, I am not sure if the paper towels which will decompose in a landfill and potentially and produce methane that can be used to generate electricity, are better or if cloth napkins and towels are better. I am going to ask around.
Most of the rest of our trash is comprised of wrappers that are not recyclable and containers for take out food. Now that our kids are grown and gone we don't cook as much.
I am pleased to report, though, that we are doing a good job making sure that recyclables get to the recycling bin and greenwaste/yardwaste gets to the greenwaste bin. I am a firm believer that the easiest and quickest way to start living a greener life is to maximize the use of "green" services available right now.
Taking your challenge is raising some interesting questions in my mind. In effect, it is forcing us to consciously make decisions about what we are using and what we do with the discards after the using is done. Maybe "living sustainably" is actually a way of living more consciously.
I'll check in again in a few days.
Doug Corcoran
Tess,
We applaud your efforts. However, we can't understand why you need to carry the garbage around with you? Couldn't you weigh it and carry the equivalent weight (maybe a bag of rocks?) The extra plastic bags used to contain smells and germs seem counterproductive to reducing trash.
Our family of three, two of whom are teenagers, has reduced our trash to 1.5 pounds per week by steadily changing our habits. We keep trying to improve. Two of us work and are even geek-enough to bring recyclables home from work. One of my 'dream' goals (Theresa's) is to get my company to adopt some recycling efforts also.
By the way, can't fish skins be eaten? Aren't they nutritious? They wouldn't then need to be thrown away.
Love your show!
For kitty litter, use Feline Pine or the equivalent from Trader Joe's. It's compostable after use, and is a good brown addition. On the other hand, unless you have only one cat (and even then), you'll probably produce more litter than any compost bin can handle...
While I dislike landfills at least as much as the next guy, I'm happy to report that lots of landfills are becoming generator sites. Your beef trimmings and lots of other biodegradables from the cities (where they can't keep chickens or coyotes) turn into methane and are burned to run generators.
That doesn't forgive us adding plastic cups to the landfills, but don't worry too much: they'll be mined for raw materials when we've run out in another 50 years.
Buy used, fix what you have rather than replace, give to (and buy from) second-hand shops: all great ideas if you have time to drive around to a bunch of rummage sales. But then what's your driving doing to help?
I guess I'm on both sides of the issue - it's a tough one!
Good luck with your quest.
It's really easy to deal with garbage if you live in the country. Everyone should own at least two chickens...(you don't need a rooster). They'll eat all the wasted food that your kids leave behind. They'll eat the meat off of the bones that you didn't. After that, throw the bones in the woodstove. Same with corn...throw the cob to the chickens, in a few days, after they've dried out, put them in the woodstove. Voila! All paper products go into the woodstove. In the summer, we save the paper to burn in the winter.
Compost pile, woodstove, chickens and recycling...that's all you need.
I'm afraid that people who are interested in this story are people who already are "in the choir." I would like to hear from people who are changing their consumer/trash/recycling habits because of this story.
My neighbor drinks out of plastic glasses at home but bought lovely glasses for me to use when I'm there because she knows it's important to me not to generate trash -- while she still uses plastic.
Another friend asks me what difference it makes to add more and more trash to landfills. I am so dumbfounded by the question, I don't answer. It's like hearing someone ask: "Why do you need to breathe every day?" To me, it's required. To him, it's not even on his radar.
A Christian friend who practices his religion and prays to his particular God smiles condescendingly at me -- while dropping his recyclables in the trash -- when I tell him that my religion is Environmentalism.
These are the people I want to join the "choir."
for kitty litter try a natural alternative. we use nature's best (or something like that) and it is corn based, so when you scoop it you put it in the toilet. now i dont know the cost benefit of trashing versus flushing but that would be a whole other story in itself.
good luck!
What are you doing about used toilet paper? O are you switching to cloth for your two weeks?
check out
www.crunchychicken.blogspot.com
if you want to try the challenge while you're doing this.
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