Marketplace

Trash Challenge: Into the Dustbin of History

Get out the tissues. (And don't forget to compost them.)

Today is the final day of our trash challenge. My bag and I parted ways on Tuesday. On Thursday it joined its neighborhood compatriots in John Wilucz's garbage truck. And I've gone three days without generating trash.

I'd love to show you another photo of my empty (new) bag... but it was used without my knowledge for other household purposes. Oops.

And so we reach the end. What have we learned?

Well first, let me share with you some thoughts from a couple of trash challenge participants. First up -- Beth Terry. I've mentioned and linked to her before. We spoke on Wednesday. Here's the interview:

And here's an interview with another trash challenge participant, Michelle Martinez:

And finally, some highlights from my own experience:

1.) This is an incredibly important issue to a lot of you. The response to the challenge went far beyond my expectations, both in the number of people who joined it, and in the number of you who were interested enough to respond to this online diary or through letters to Marketplace.

True, it's not exactly a scientific survey, but there's passion out there... along with a slew of creative ideas about how to fix the landfill problem. Politicians -- local and national -- should be paying attention.

2.) While it may be possible to get down to zero waste, it's not probable and it's certainly not easy, especially for any length of time. Some of the blame for that difficulty lies with those of us who keep buying all kinds of stuff that we don't need, so there's no incentive for retailers and manufacturers to cut back.

Some of the blame lies with those same manufacturers who wrap all our crap (pardon my French) in way too much packaging. Even if that packaging is recyclable, they're assuming people will recycle and are able to. We shouldn't have to do that work for them. There's just no reason why a one-inch square digital media card has to come in a plastic container fifteen times its size.

Of course there's plenty more blame to go around, but I'd say those are two big reasons why it's not easier to get to zero.

3.) When it comes to recycling, there should be national standards for what's available to citizens. It's mind-boggling that I can recycle something in Southern California that someone up north can't... and vice versa.

I know these things are decided by local governments and sanitation districts. And recycling is expensive. But there's got to be a solution to what really is an issue of inequality. People who don't have access to good (easy!) recycling programs are stuck sending everything to landfills.

4.) That creativity I mentioned above? Wow... amazing ideas. Take used cardboard and cereal boxes to the local school for art projects. Use a bokashi bucket. Or a Doggie Dooley. Some of these ways to cut down do cost money. A lot of them don't.

None of this is breathtakingly new. But hauling my trash around made me hyper-aware of my own consumption patterns. And it forced me to think outside the... bin. Maybe it did the same for you.

Be sure to tune into all the programs of American Public Media in November for a special project called "Consumed." We'll be airing an entire week's worth of stories and interviews about America's consumer culture and whether it's sustainable.

On Marketplace Money we'll be devoting our entire show the weekend of November 17th to the question "What's wrong with trash?" We'll have stories about our throwaway habits, how tough it is to "unplug" from the marketing machine, and I'll profile a group of folks in New York City who forage Prospect Park for plants and go dumpster-diving for perfectly-edible food along 3rd Avenue. We'll also talk about the decline of the fix-it-don't-buy-it culture, and we'll visit a plant in China that imports recyclable material from the U.S. and sends it back as packaging for our consumer goods. Tune in!

I hope you've enjoyed watching and playing along. Keep working at it... I know I will. And thanks to all for your comments, hints, and cheerleading! This has actually -- amazingly -- been fun.

Trash Vigeland... out.

Comments (9)

T-minus 2

Another day without trash.

People at Marketplace and around our building keep coming up to me and saying "where's the bag?!?!" When I tell them I had to trash it earlier this week they look at me like I've just put down the family pet. Then I say, hey, you should try it -- get your own bag! Carry it around! Suddenly they have somewhere they have to be.

I came close to starting a new bag because of a Styrofoam container that held my lunch. But I double-checked and I can, indeed, take it home and put it in my recycle bin. Phew. (I should try to convince the cafe downstairs to stop using Styrofoam.)

As I enter the last, what, 36 hours or so of the challenge? -- I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to continue keeping my trash volume at a low level. But I really don't know how people get it down to zero. It's a great goal, but achieving it would be a Herculean task suited to folks who decide to not only go off the electrical grid, but also off the garbage grid.

There just are things that have to go to landfills. But there's also so much there that doesn't belong there. So reducing as much as we can will certainly help. Oh -- and here's a new one that I haven't figured out: what can you do with used bandages? I'm pretty sure medical waste doesn't belong in either the compost bin or recycling.

Anybody have any last thoughts as we head into the final day of the challenge? Have you been able to reduce your own waste stream? Even a little? Are you looking at product packaging in a new light? Are you making purchasing decisions based on where your stuff will end up when you're done using it/eating it/wearing it/consuming it? Are you going to see if your local school wants to use your cereal boxes for art projects?

Comments (2)

My Bag, Jr.

The big, stinky bag is gone, but I've been trash-free ever since.

Victory!

A day without garbage. I brought all my recyclables home from the office with me yesterday. And we had takeout last night with (I think) recyclable packaging. So the little plastic (yes, plastic) garbage bag is still empty. We'll see if I can keep that up for another 72 hours.

My personal observations the last few days have really turned to the recycling end of all this. I mentioned in an earlier posting that maybe we should follow the Toronto model of having a "Green Bin" that holds all food waste and takes it to a massive compost heap. Well Beth Terry says they have that in Oakland. (San Fran does, too.)

Why don't we have it in Pasadena? At the same time, she can't recycle any plastic that's black. In Pasadena, far as I know, we can. That's just silly. Maybe she could ship me her black plastic and I could send her my food waste. Then, of course, we'd be generating more carbon emissions. By the way Beth has a great rundown of things to watch for when you're tossing stuff into the recycling bin. Check it out.

And here's something I knew in the back of my brain, but is still depressing: All that recycling I think I'm doing? A good chunk of it is probably going to the landfill anyway. Beth shared with me some comments from a writer who calls himself "Radical Garbageman" -- and works in the waste management industry:

Dirty little secret of waste management: Single stream recyclers often "inflate" the definitions of what is recyclable because it increases recovery rates of things that are really recyclable by making it easy.The first step is to then sort out the non-recyclables and landfill them.

I guess more is better than less. But it would be so much better if I knew what was actually going to be recycled. I've posted the Pasadena guidelines here before -- and they're not very specific. (Still waiting for a callback from the city's PR folks.)

Here's Radical Garbageman's response to those of us who feel somewhat betrayed by the knowledge that we're not necessarily the recycling paragons we thought we were:

1. Any material that isn't in the bin goes to the landfill anyway
2. "Contamination" increases costs to the taxpayer (both in sorting costs and in the potential spoiling of recyclables, e.g. newspaper contaminated with food products can't be used anymore)
3. Making the program easy increases compliance at the risk of increased contamination

What do you think?

Meanwhile... I was on the Marketplace Morning Report this AM, talking about the challenge results so far. Several listeners took me to task for buying boneless, skinless chicken breast in order to reduce what goes in the trash.

"All it does is upstream the waste disposal to a processing plant or her local grocery store." Well yes, and I said as much in an earlier blog posting. Hopefully my butcher does something useful (i.e. mass composting) with the detritus that I'm not able to deal with in my backyard.

It does, indeed, have to go somewhere and I assumed people would know that. But as part of the trash challenge, I was doing whatever I could to make it possible to carry that thing around for as long as I could stand it.

And here's a comment from listener Nancy Wygant in Philadelphia:

Individual changes will not be enough to restructure our entire economy from a model based on consuming the world's resources as fast as possible for the sake of short-term profit, to a model based on sustainable stewardship of resources to meet real needs. But individual changes are where we each have to start. A radio show like yours could help by giving us better information and perspective on the real larger implications of our choices.

Again, that's the point of this whole exercise and certainly will be the point of the Consumed series in November. Probably the most frustrating part of this entire challenge has been that there's quite a bit that's generally out of my control, including packaging, recycling rules, and the space available for compost bins in my backyard. And unless you make change easy for the mass population, most people aren't going to make the effort.

And let's end on a positive note from listener Rebecca Roberts in Lincoln, Nebraska. She pointed me to an art installation in New Hampshire. This guy photographed all his trash for a year!

Maybe I'll put a hidden camera in my garbage disposal...

ADDENDUM:
My Marketplace Money colleague Stephen Hoffman, who so kindly came up with some earlier nicknames for me (see previous postings) has just coined a new one:

Less Mess Vigeland

Another small victory.

Comments (4)

RIP, Not-So-BFF

OMG. Goodbye.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007, 7 AM PDT:

T-minus four days. But I couldn't hold out.

The stench started to get nasty about midday yesterday. It got worse in the car on the way home from work. Left it outside on the stoop for most of the evening, then brought it in to spend the night in the foyer...

By this morning... OMG. Time to put it out of my misery. And so, after 10 days of service, my bag is in its next-to-final resting place... the trash bin. Awaiting Thursday's trip to the landfill.

My goal for the final four days of this challenge is to see if I can contain my trash to a single plastic grocery bag... maybe even get to zero. With all your tips and suggestions, I just might pull it off.

And now... a moment of silence.

Comments (7)

Trash Vigeland and Her Rat Posse

Household cleaning really makes the bag fill up quick...

Nine days and counting and finally... this thing is getting heavy. Over the weekend I added cleaning materials to it... rags soaked with Windex and such. The conundrum there is, do I toss those rags, or clean them in the washing machine where the polluted water can go to the ocean. Ack! This is hard!

I know, I know, I should switch to more environmentally-friendly cleaning products. But we just haven't fully done that yet. (My husband swears things don't get as clean and that these products aren't worth the extra cost -- an ongoing debate in the household.) So my BFF Bag now smells like... ammonia, I guess.

There are also a couple more corn cobs in there. And a balled-up thing of tinfoil. Is that recyclable? Haven't heard back from the city yet. Other questionable items that I've been tossing in the recycle bin: plastic (Saran) wrap, dry cleaning bags, cosmetics packaging, Starbucks cups (is that a "beverage container" according to Pasadena recycling rules? I assume so...).

I've also avoided the weekly fridge clean-out during this challenge. You know... uneaten leftovers, past-date milk and other dairy, etc. Old lettuce and other veg can go in the composter. But the rest of it, well the food goes down the disposal and the packaging goes into recycling. But there are often things that get tossed in the trash. Maybe I'm buying too many groceries. So there's another lesson: No need to keep a full fridge!

I'm also finding that it's sometimes more expensive to try to save yourself from generating waste. Bought boneless, skinless chicken the other night so my bag o' bones wouldn't have even more bones... but boneless/skinless costs more (and of course, those bones probably went in the trash at the grocery meat department).

One interesting solution came up in a response on this blog. For those of you who haven't seen his posting, Keith Jackson lives near Toronto, Canada, and they have something called the Green Bin -- a dedicated container, like recycling and yard waste, that lets them put all kitchen waste (food) into a separate bin. The city hauls it away for mass composting.

Somebody told me that the U.S. did this in World War II... that they had separate bins for food waste and also for metal (for use in war-building materials). Can anybody tell me more about this? I wonder why it stopped?

A couple more highlights from your comments:

Rick wrote in an suggested that we all take non-compostable packaging back to the store it came from. Tell customer service that we're returning the unneeded and unwanted parts of our purchase. Now that would get manufacturers' attention! Perhaps do the same for non-recyclable packaging?

And the prize for most unusual waste-reduction scheme goes to another anonymous poster:

You should get a pair of pet rats. Yep! Their bedding is compostible and they just LOVE cooked chicken bones.

Trash Vigeland and her Rat Posse. Want to buy the movie rights?

Please let us know if you're joining the trash challenge. There's a link on the right-hand side of this page. If you want to check on the progress of one of my challenge compatriots, visit Beth Terry's site. She says after a day-and-a-half, her trash fits in her pants pocket.

Oh, if only...

Comments (4)

My Bag, BFF for Another Week...

My Best Friend the Bag -- with me until the end of the Trash Challenge...

I'm about to hit one week of carrying my trash around... and there's some disagreement about how the next part works. I thought I would be tossing the first week, starting anew to see how much less I can generate in week two. But since my Best Friend The Bag is so small, there's a suggestion that I just keep filling the original and see how much waste I have after two weeks. So -- lucky me!!! -- that's what we're going to do.

For the most part, I've been able to recycle or compost most of my waste this week. We should have had a scale today, but I don't think there's one in the office. I can definitely say that I did not generate six pounds per day -- which is the national average. That would be 35 pounds or so to carry around and I'd be developing some nice guns.

Maybe that's the solution to my exercise aversion: Carry my trash around for the rest of my life. Hmm.

By the way, I'm thinking about buying a second composting bin. The city of Pasadena is selling them at our local farmer's market this weekend. Just have to figure out where I could put it in our backyard. And I'm definitely thinking that somebody should nominate me for this.

But here's a question that's come up -- am I recycling things that aren't really recyclable? I've been putting just about everything that's plastic, styrofoam, glass, aluminum or paper into my recycle bin. I don't look at numbers on the bottom of milk containers. I don't look at anything except what it's made of. So I went to the city Web site -- and lo and behold, they have rules. Uh oh. Here's the rundown:

THE FOLLOWING RECYCLABLE ITEMS ARE ACCEPTABLE:
º Aerosol cans (empty)
º Beverage and food containers (rinsed)
º Cardboard (flattened)
º Junk mail, mixed paper, catalogs, magazines, phone books
º Newspapers
º Plastics types 1 through 7

So I guess I'd better start looking for the numbers on my plastics. But what about beverage and food containers? They're all OK? Really? I'll see if I can reach someone at the city to get even more details next week.

Meantime, I wanted to respond to some of your comments from the past week. They're in italics -- my responses are not.

Sue: What are you doing about used toilet paper? Or are you switching to cloth for your two weeks?

Doesn't count! I'm only carrying trash with me. Not stuff that usually gets flushed into the sewer system. I have limits!

Brent Tannehill: 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.

Ok. That's it. Farewell, Hollywood. Hello, Nebraska!

Greg: Hey, Tess! Great story. My office works the same in that we can only recycle office paper. Nothing else. So, I keep a box under my desk and put any other recyclable items in it and take it home once a week and make sure it gets in my recycling bin at home. Some of my coworkers think I'm weird, but others have started doing the same thing (or they ask if they can put it in my box!)

My coworkers think I'm weird already (uh... I'm carrying around my trash), so I guess this wouldn't be a huge stretch. Maybe I'll try it next week. But unless my colleagues agree to carry around their own garbage (which they won't -- weenies...), they don't get to add to my recycling box.

Kathy: DON'T USE PAPER TOWELS. OR NAPKINS. Use cloth rags, dish cloths, cloth napkins.

Certainly seems like a rational suggestion. I could also carry a handkerchief with me instead of using Kleenex -- though I now know those are compostable. But this brings up another issue: If I start using more cloth, I'm going to have more laundry. So I'll use more water. Which is the last thing anyone should be doing in parched Los Angeles. What's the trade-off worth?

Anonymous: I was stuck by your first paragraph in today's post. I am curious if you completely forget about the Trash Challenge while walking the grocery aisles? When I walk the grocery aisles I am always thinking of the life of the product -- where it will end up?

Dear Anonymous: You're a better (wo?)man than I.

And finally, some reality from an urban-dweller like me. Brent Agnew says he's a big fan of recycling, cooking at home, etc. But...

Brent Agnew: 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 garbage discourages the development of new technology or industries for dealing with the problem which also effects my retirement account.

Our assignment for the weekend? Come up with some answers. Go!

Comments (13)

Trash Vigeland's Ride-Along

Thursday's load to bear.

My trash guy in Pasadena, John Wilucz.

Wilucz estimated he picked up 700 to 1,000 trash bins during Thursday's ride-along.

Scholl Canyon, my trash's destination. No Trash Challenge rubbish was harmed -- or tossed -- in the process... It was rubbish from before the Challenge started.

The name-calling continues unabated. First, Bag Lady. Now, in a play on the name my parents agonized over some 38 years ago:"Trash Vigeland"... courtesy of my Marketplace Money colleague Stephen Hoffman. He also thought "Mess Vigeland" was pretty funny. Ha, ha.

So one of the rules I set out for myself before the challenge started was that I didn't have to carry around our dog or cat poo. Health risk. But my friend Melissa Carter told me about something called a Doggie Dooley that could solve the pet waste problem. (It's not supposed to go in a regular composter, unless you have a massive pile that generates massive amounts of heat.)

Anybody ever used one of these? Would my roses like it? I'm also not sure, based on this Web site whether kitty litter can go in there. It would certainly solve the problem of putting animal waste in the landfill. Ewwwww.

Speaking of ewwwww... I followed my trash from curbside to landfill this morning. You'll hear more about this when our "Consumed" series airs in November. But I met up with the Pasadena Integrated Waste Management crew at their dispatch center early in the morning. Then hopped in the truck with "my" garbage guy, John Wilucz.

He estimated that during our 3-1/2 hour excursion, we picked up somewhere between 700 and 1,000 trash bins, including the one from my house. (It only had two days' worth of trash -- the two days between the last pickup and when I started the challenge.)

It's amazing how efficient the whole process is now. No more garbage guy (or gal) hopping out of the truck, lifting the can onto his shoulders and heaving it into the back of the truck. John hardly ever got out of the rig. There's just an arm that reaches out from the side of the truck, grabs the bin, and chucks it into the dumper.

And although it's not like we all stand at the curb and watch our trash go away, I do think it's symbolic of how we think -- or don't think -- about our garbage. It just goes away. It's a neat, mostly clean system. Takes five seconds for it to go bye-bye. And we never worry about it again.

Same with today's modern landfills. They're not eyesores anymore, so there's not much to complain about unless it's in your backyard. They've even found ways to manage the smell. In fact, the landfill I visited today -- Scholl Canyon, where my trash went -- frankly you'd never know it was there. It's waaay on top of a massive hill just off the freeway.

That kind of disappearing act has got to be factoring into why we all aren't talking more about our trash and where it goes... Why we don't all complain about the extra packaging that comes with our stuff... Why we don't think about the things we buy as the second-to-last stop in the consumption chain (the landfill being the last).

Who knew a ride-along in a garbage truck could be so enlightening?

Comments (2)

Chicken Dance

Chicken bones? What was I thinking? It might be a loooong two weeks...

Well it finally happened: I let down my guard last night, forgot about the trash challenge while walking through the grocery aisles, and bought a roasted chicken for dinner. D'oh! So that fear of chicken bones that I mentioned in my first posting? Yeah. I'm carrying around a chicken carcass now (our dog got a nice meal out of the leftovers).

I've got it double-Ziploc'd, but the trash bag is starting to smell, at least when I open it up. So far the bag itself is doing a pretty good stink-containment job. But I have a feeling it's going to get pretty bad as the day wears on.

I did remember to bring a carry-cup with me to Starbucks today. So at least I won't be tossing a paper cup in the trash bag. (See my previous posting.)

This morning I was on Sound of Ideas, a talk show on public station WCPN in Cleveland, talking about the trash challenge. One of the callers suggested that I could use some of my recyclables, like cardboard cereal boxes, to make art projects. A great idea unless, like, me, you're so artistically inept you can't even draw stick people. But maybe it's something school districts would be interested in?

Another caller mentioned that she's seen her trash and recycling go into the same truck on garbage day and wanted to know what that was all about. Good question! My only guess is that maybe there's some sort of sorting machine in the truck. But I think in most cities, including mine, they're picked up by different trucks. Anybody know whassup in Cleveland?

By the way, for those of you here in LA, I'll be talkin' trash with Patt Morrison on her show on KPCC (89.3) today.

Meanwhile... Anybody out there joining me in the challenge? If so, please post and let us all know how it's going. (In the column to the right, there's a form where you can sign up for your own challenge, plus join our Public Insight Network) And please keep sending the helpful hints and suggestions. I've already put many of them in place and it's helped keep the garbage load down.

I think we'll have salad for dinner tonight.

ADDENDUM: If any of you heard my story last weekend about the closing of the Bradley landfill here in Los Angeles, you know that my tour guide, Doug Corcoran, said he would take the trash challenge. Doug commented today in the comments section under my first posting, "The Good, The Bad, and the Stinky." Check it out.

Comments (12)

The Bag Lady

I might be called the Bag Lady, but at least the bag is small. For now, and maybe for the rest of the Trash Challenge.

Well all you people who were gleefully looking forward to watching me perform this awful task... Ha! I'm still not carrying around much trash. I told the folks here at Marketplace that I wasn't a big "waster" and they said hey you probably throw away more than you think you do. Well so far, I don't.

Speaking of the office... I caught some flak from colleagues yesterday who pointed out that I wasn't literally carrying my trash EVERYWHERE. Like into the studio. And to editorial meetings. I was leaving it in my office. No dice! said they. So my trash made its debut in the Marketplace studios today while I was interviewing the author of a new book called The Missing Class. My producer laughed at me. (Stay tuned for the interview in an upcoming edition of Marketplace Money.)

Back to the trash itself... I'm finding that the bulk of my "tossage" is happening at work. Our building's recycling program only allows office paper, glass bottles and aluminum cans. That's it. Quite frustrating. For example, that Starbucks cup that holds my grande extra-hot nonfat latte? Goes in the recycling bin at home. Goes in the garbage at work.

Of course, I could haul all my work trash home every day, but really? Though now that I think of it, the easy solution there would be to get a carry-cup that I just wash out. I should do that. OK, I'll do that. Starting tomorrow morning. (I've done this in fits and spurts before... Time to try it again.)

But all kinds of other recyclable trash just goes to waste all over this building. We have what we call a Green Team here at Marketplace and they're doing their best to find more solutions. But we're just tenants in an office complex and can't make up the rules.

For those of you who haven't seen all the comments from blog readers, Diane found a fantastic list of all the things you can compost. I wish I had room in my bin to do all of this (I think mine is only about 35 gallons). But at least for these next two weeks I should be able to toss in all kinds of things I didn't know were compost fodder.

Oh... and did I mention my friends have taken to calling me the Bag Lady?

Comments (3)

Of Corn Cobs and Kleenex

My burden to bear: Monday morning's tally isn't so bad... BTW, the yellow poster at top right? The Pasadena Humane Society's annual Wiggle Waggle Walk charity event is coming up September 30 — you can sponsor Tess by clicking here.

So far, so... not too bad. We managed to compost and/or recycle most of our waste over the weekend. What's in my trash bag right now? Let's see...

· I've got corn cobs (they take a loooong time to decompose in my compost bin so I generally don't include them) from corn I bought at the farmer's market on Saturday morning.

· I've also got some used Kleenex in there, due to unusual fall allergies — though I "cheated" and flushed most of them. I think maybe I could compost them, but I'm not sure. Anybody help on that one? I do compost my paper towels as long as they don't have oil on them, so maybe Kleenex is ok, too?

· And what else? Oh yeah — the thing that I'm afraid will stink up the joint at some point today: steak trimmings. I've put them inside a Ziploc bag, but I don't know that that will keep out the smell of rotting meat.

A couple of you have suggested that in order to not generate waste like those — the meat scraps and the fish skins and chicken bones that I've talked about — that I go vegetarian, or even vegan. I understand that it's a choice many people make for many different reasons. But I have a couple of thoughts about that method of reducing our waste stream.

Without getting into the debates over health benefits, animal rights, etc., I'm not sure it's realistic to expect that enough people in the world — or even in this country — would become vegetarians that it would actually have an impact.

I think the best way to get people to reduce their waste stream is to make it easy, manageable, and [ahem] palatable for them to do so. And asking everyone to stop eating chicken, fish and other meats is more likely to make them throw their arms up in the air and quit the effort. [Feel free to hit the comment button and convince me otherwise!]

I do applaud those who have made that decision, but it's not for my family. So I'm destined to carry around meat detritus for the next two weeks.

I'm intrigued by a couple of other solutions suggested by listeners. Ernie Jackson down in Oceanside, Calif., pointed me to a Website touting something called "bokashi." It's a wheat bran that apparently helps break down non-veggie food waste. Uses a bucket system that, frankly, sounds kinda gross to have in the kitchen, but might be an interesting experiment. And there's another site that listener Sylvia Tuchscherer of Topeka, Kans., suggested — something called a Solarcones. I'll do some more investigating into that one.

So anybody out there planning to try this for a day or two? If so, look to the right of this column and you'll see an area to sign up for the challenge. We'd love to hear your stories.

Meantime, 'til my next post, I thought you'd enjoy a couple of audio samples of reaction to my challenge:

Listen to my husband and I as we took out our last pre-challenge trash bags on Friday night.

Hear a voicemail my piano teacher left for me after hearing my interview with Kai on Friday's Marketplace show.

Comments (7)

The Good, the Bad and the Stinky

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.

Comments (32)