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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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Medical waste is a huge issue that I haven't seen addressed here by anyone. Our family has a child with serious health issues and the amount of medical waste that we produce makes us want to scream. But there are no alternatives that we have found to simply throwing a lot of things away. A prime example are feeding tubes and bags that have held formula. These are not designed to be re-used -there is no way for you to sterilize them even if you wanted to do so. So every day you throw one away and use a new one. Then there are all those medicines that are left over with no way to dispose of them "safely" or to "recycle" them - even when they're unopened.
I shudder to think of the amount of waste that's being generated by hospitals, doctor and dentist offices, clinics - anyplace that's providing medical care. The demand that everything appear to be "sterile" is absurd. In some cases, older ways that were adequate like cleaning a table instead of covering it with paper are still good enough IMHO. Making so many medical supplies in a disposable form will stop making economic sense at some point when the cost to throw it all away and the cost to produce it become too great. I wonder how much of the escalating costs of medical care can be tied to the adoption of disposable supplies and equipment?
Patricia
I'm sorry, what's the point?
This "experiment" is an attempt to show what exactly? Why not do an experiment where you produce your own food instead of buying what has been grown, harvested, shipped, and/or prepared for you? Won't that tell you if you are living a "sustainable" life? The answer is no. It will tell you that you probably aren't very good at raising your own food! Doesn't mean that there's problems with our global ability to produce food, just means that you're not terribly good at it. Same thing with this experiment. It tells you nothing about whether your lifestyle is "sustainable" or not. It DOES tell you that you aren't very good at keeping trash to a minimum. Fortunately, humans have developed mechanisms to deal with trash. We're actually quite good at it! That's why you don't see areas of the US with trash spewing all over the place.
There is no landfill shortage... there's plenty of space for all the junk that we produce. Does that mean we ought not care about resource use? Not at all. But, this experiment can't show what you intend it to show. And, we really don't have a problem with "sustainable" consumption.
Bruce
Sue, you are too cool. I'm a cloth pad and Diva person, not quite graduated to wipes. But I did think in the potty this morning that I bet this experiment doesn't include TP and such. It's sort of a hidden kind of trash. So is the fry container from which I mooched fries off of my friend today. So is the paper bib that my dentist used. I was not directly responsible for them, but they are built into the system of services I utilize. Then there are wastes that I will never see, on the industrial level. Trash runs deep...
I would like to agree with Shirley form India.
Poor countries re-use everything. I came here from Poland in 1992. When I grew up there, recycling glass seemed to be the norm. As far as I remember aluminum and plastic containers were very rare. Since it was a poor country, we didn't have resources to waste so we were forced to recycle. Same went for waste in general. We re-used things until you couldn't use them anymore. No market asked you "paper or plastic?". We had to bring our own cloth bags with us. Personally, I think stores themselves should be banned from distributing free plastic bags.
My point is that it is NOT hard to live like that. It may only be a minor inconvenience for the average person.
Good luck with the challenge, I'll be listening.
I am a vegetarian. The smelly garbage is gone. I keep a strainer in the sink made of metal to collect food waste and at the end of the day wrap it in paper and throw it away or garbage-disposal it. Buy a favorite vegetable soap and put sliver in a plastic bottle with water for liquid soap to clean. The plastic bottle could be eliminated by rubbing a wash cloth over the soap and cleaning. A tip I heard is sliver vegetable soap into the washing machine or sink for clothes and dishes. Salt water, lemon water, lavender water, are the herbs and citric acids endless for cleaning products? Baking soda and vinegar are great cleaning products. I try to eliminate the plastic. Salt is a fantastic dish washing product for the dishwasher. Eliminates the chemicals and kills germs.
"what to do with chicken and fish bones? those ain't compostable", you say. but they could be! just came across bokashi, technology known for centuries in japan. it is a form of intense composting, using mix of wheat bran with molasses, water and microbes blend of yeasts and bacteria, the good ones - both aerobic and anaerobic. it reduces the smell and there are no bugs. however, after 2 weeks of fermenting, compost need to be buried in the soil. you better have one or befriend someone who has one!
tess, you are our dumpster diva, very proud of you!
Dear Tess,
It's fantastic that you are running your trash challenge and bringing the fact of unsustainability of our lifestyle to the attention of the listeners. Most people have not even thought about it and are not aware that the current lifestyle in our country is not sustainable. If all the people on Earth adopted the average USA life style, it would take the resources of several planet Earths to support it!
As I am sure you are aware, reducing the amount of trash we produce is just the first small step. Recycling is also great and better than just throwing thing away into trash, but it is also costly and consumes a lot of energy.
To really solve the sustainability problem we need to fundamentally change our life style. We live in way too big houses, buy way too much stuff, drive too far to work in way too big cars, and so on. As the Earth Charter (http://www.earthcharter.org/) put it pointedly:
· We must realize that when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more.
· For our civilization to survive, we need to change our culture and economy
· We need to stop wanting more and more things and find fulfillment not in possessing more and more material things, but in venues that do not consume so many resources (for example arts and culture).
Recent massive cheap production in the Third World countries surely made tons of products cheaply available to huge numbers of people, but most people who buy them do not realize that this rate of consumption will quickly exhaust the Earth's resources. The question that each one of us should be asking is not if I can afford to buy more and more stuff, but if the Earth can afford me to keep buying more and more stuff. The push for producing and selling more and more things is driven by the desire for short-term profits with no consideration of long-term effects.
The media are in a unique position, as they can make people aware of this problem and as they can present alternatives to our current consumer culture.
I sincerely hope that you will continue highlighting the sustainability on your program and that other media follow suit. How about making it a permanent weekly feature on your program, regularly discussing different aspects of sustainability and alternative economic and cultural models?
Thanks a lot for your attention to this issue.
Best regards,
Roman
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