Trash Audit - A.K.A. Does this Trash Make My Bin Look Big?

Happy New Year!

We audited our trash last week, to check in to see how we were doing, in our quest to make less trash.  We hosted many people for both Christmas and New Years, and I am happy to report, that even with the present opening, we still have room in our trash can!  (We forgot to put it our between Christmas and New Years.)  Here is what it looked like:

Trash:
8 plastic bags of assorted food packaging (crackers, bread, cheese, ham)
Three plastic tubs (cottage cheese, dip and spread)
12 candy wrappers.  Mostly paper and foil.
 One kitchen trash bag of paper (from a purge of old paperwork.  This all arrives paperless now, but we still had it from the past.)
Christmas Packaging - fit in one 10" x 10" by 8" box.  This was the rigid plastic around a toy each of my kids got.  There was also tissue paper that was beyond reuse, and had already served us well several times!  Santa wrapped his gifts - so there was a small amount of gift wrap  We were pleased that Santa used eco-friendly printed paper.  
One grocery sized bag of assorted tissues, floss, misc.  bathroom trash - collected from all the bathrooms.
Two paper soda cups that came home from eating out - no lids or straws.
Three pieces of fruit that went bad.
A decent handful of junk mail and envelopes from Christmas cards we received.
12 glass bottles of various types.  Did you know that glass can be recycled forever?  It never goes down in quality like other products. 
13 cans of cat food.   Our elderly cats can't eat dry food very well any more.  
4 soup cans.
Cat waste.

Diverted:
8 cans from soda.  They are being diverted to make soda can art, like this 
4 wine bottles.  Diverted to make these centerpieces.
Loads of gift bags and tissue.  We refold and put these back away for another year.  
Compostable plates from New Year's Eve.  They will go into the worm bin.
5 plastic cups - that were washed out and will be used again.
5 cardboard boxes that will be used for art at reCREATE.
Eco -Packing peanuts - which can be used for to make fun art sculptures, like this.


Not Among Our Trash:
Wasted Food from Christmas Eve.  We carefully calculated how much food was appropriate for our guests.  We replenished food as needed.  Result - virtually no wasted food after hosting 11 people.
Excess Packaging:  Among the adults - almost all gifts were either handmade or "experience" gifts.  I'm thrilled that we will be getting together with other family members to see theater performances, and attending some lovely fundraisers together.  Not only are we helping causes, we now have some dates that we know we will be having fun together.  My sister and her husband are taking our kids to see a show and keeping them overnight.  They can't wait!
Disposable Plates & Cutlery - We did bring out some paper plates for New Year's Eve- but we will compost them.  We used all real plates and cutlery for the rest of the time, and just cleaned up afterwards. 
Shopping Bags - We bring our own when we shop - so we don't have a drawer exploding with one use plastic shopping bags.  
Christmas Decor - I heard a story about a local family that put their Christmas Tree out for the scouts to pick up.  It still had on the lights and ornaments.  I can't imagine that!  Each year as we pull out our ornaments, we revisit memories of Christmas Past.    The result is that we reuse them every year.  We did buy a tree this year... but I know it will be mulched and made into compost. 
Much of the food we bought was placed in our glass containers, significantly reducing the amount of waste we generated.  

We are still learning, but are quite proud of our low waste holidays!  How did you do?

 

Does This Trash Make My Bin Look Big?!

An Inventory of our Garbage

In order to see how we are progressing with our Zero Waste Journey - We need to know how we are doing right now.   We wrote down everything we tossed for the week, and then inventoried it.

According to the EPA, each person in the US makes about 4.4 pounds of waste each day.  That means the average family would make 123 lbs. of waste per week.  Of course some of it is recyclable, but wow- that is a lot of trash. 

Here is the inventory of our trash for this week:

Paper:  

• Election Guide
• Mailed newspaper circulars, Saturday and Sunday newspapers
• 43 election flyers
• 18 pieces of assorted junk mail, brochures, envelopes, etc.
• 36 pieces of completed homework sent home after being graded  
• One old magazine that was torn up for the collage I made from magazine pieces
• Several tissues - as we had the sniffles this week
• One empty paper bag from See's Candy
• Four Paper towels - the end of the roll - we are going to attempt to not buy any more

Plastic:  We were overdue to clean out our refrigerator, so we took a hit here:  

• Seven plastic tubs - yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, bean dip, hummus - all almost gone but past expiration date.  We emptied, rinsed and put in to the garbage.  (These were purchased before we started this, but I still feel guilty!)
• Plastic wrap from around the Olive Oil we purchased 2 bottles.
• Plastic lunch meat container (sizeable from Costco.)
• Plastic wrap from cheeses we finished and the chicken breasts we cooked for dinner.  
• Plastic from some Smoked Salmon
• Three plastic bread bags - We pulled out the bread maker - and my husband has already made 3 great loaves of bread!
• Bags the newspapers came wrapped in
• Two shampoo bottles (we are planning on refilling bottles in the future - but these were excess bottles)
• Plastic bags from frozen veggies, fruit, and sausage
• Plastic Method hand soap refill pouch - refilled several containers, but is empty.
• Lid from egg nog
• Empty peanut butter jar - we will be using our own glass containers in the bulk area in the future. 
• Halloween candy wrappers - 10 total.... I know  - yuck, but sometimes I need to pick my battles with the family.
• Empty kids toothpaste  

Cardboard:

• 4 boxes from food
• Egg nog carton
• empty cardboard container from left over food at a restaurant.   I was mad at myself for forgetting to bring my take out container for my leftovers, but need to give a nod to Dos Coyotes for their Eco-friendly to-go container
• One empty soda cup from lunch at a restaurant. (At least I didn't opt for a lid or straw)

Glass:

• BBQ sauce bottle
• One broken drinking glass
• One wine bottle
• 2 beer bottles 
• empty mayonnaise jar 

Foil / Metal:

• Empty Peets coffee bean bag - 2 lb size means less packaging. 
• Foil from wrapped leftovers
• Foil pouch from Costco sized yeast bought for making out own bread
• 7 cans from cat food (our cats are quite elderly and just can't eat the dry food anymore like they used to
• Two cans from crushed tomatoes used for dinners

Misc.:

• Waste from our cats' litter box.  Not sure how we can get around this.
• Dirty newspaper that lined the parakeets cage.   

TOTAL Waste weight for the week: 31 pounds.  

10.5 pounds were cat litter waste, so we generated   20.5 pounds of waste total for the week, or about .75 lbs. of waste per person per day.  While that is not a lot according to the EPA, 20 pounds of garbage is still too much.  We can do better!


Some of our day to day behaviors we should celebrate, because they make no waste:

• Packing the kids lunch in a tin container, with a cloth napkin, and reusable fork.  
• We all use reusable water bottles and reusable coffee cups.  
• If I want to splurge and go out for a coffee, I bring my own cup, or I don't get one
• We bring our own bags to the store when we shop.
• We have a worm bin for some of our food waste. 
  

Celebrations this week on our Zero Waste Journey:

We made our own bread a few times.  I made a batch of tortillas from scratch, and we said no to purchases we had made in the past, and found better alternatives.


I stopped in the new Fresh Market in Roseville.  Immediately I eyed the bulk bins - they seemed to have loads of great stuff to buy in bulk.   

First stop was the deli counter.  The girl was very nice, and happy to put my deli purchases directly into my container.  
Then she said, "Oh, I don't want to put this label on your container, so I'll just put it on this bag you can take to checkout.
Me, "No!  Please put the label on my container, I asked you to put everything in the container to avoid using plastic."
Her, "Oh, ok. Here you go."

They were more than happy to let me use my own containers for bulk, and weighed my other containers for me.  After a closer look - it looked mostly like snack foods, and we didn't need that, so I got just one snack mix.  I wish they had more organic choices.

When I went to check out, I explained to the Checker that the weight of the containers was on the bottom and needed to be subtracted from the container.  
She asked, "So that if how much the bulk weighs, written on the bottom? 
Me, "No, that is the weight of the container.  You need to subtract if from the total weight."
She fumbled with her computer for a few minutes, then looked at me and said,"  Today for you, it is free.  Can you use the bags in the future?  Our system isn't set up for this."
Me, "Thank you, but no - I can't use the bags, I'm trying to keep excess plastic out of the landfill."
Her,"That is good of you,  I will try and figure out how to do this, so we know in the future."
Me, "I hope so, I'd like to be able to shop here again." 

Costco shopping was not very successful - excess packaging made us say no to some of our usual purchases.  Big containers of individually wrapped items are no longer on our "to buy list". 

All in all, some good mixed with challenges.   I realized how much Whole Foods does to encourage people to bring their own containers.


Failings This Week:

My husband and I went out to grab a quick lunch on Friday.  We planned to go to try a new cafe, but it was too busy, so we landed at L&L Barbeque.  We were planning on eating there, so it never occurred to me to think about packaging.  Both of our meals were served in styrofoam.  We ate it all there, so it didn't hit our garbage inventory, but why do restaurants still use this stuff?  Not going back without my own plate!