For a while now I’ve been thinking about what I throw away every day. I was even thinking about starting a new blog, “What I Threw Away Today,” where I’d keep track of my progress at reducing our household waste. But then I heard about a book for bloggers with topic suggestions, entitled, “No One Cares What You Had For Lunch,” so I figured if no one cared what I put in my body, no one probably cared what I put in our trash bin either.
I’m still mentally keeping the list though, and generally being more aware. If a package had a combination of plastic and paper, I used to just throw it away, but now I take the time to tear it apart and recycle the paper part. I put a recycling bin in our office for sensitive paper that could be recycled, and someday I plan to shred it — when they invent silent shredders — and add it to our black box. I’ve also been more careful about taking plastic containers of rotting yogurt and sour cream, an all-too-common occurance in our fridge, and cleaning them out so they can be recycled instead of thrown away.
It was garbage day today and I was pretty pleased that even with diapers (which still amount to about 25% of our weekly trash), all of our garbage fit into our bin. It’s a big one — probably about 1 1/2 bags worth — but it’s still progress. Now I find that the majority of our non-diaper garbage falls into two categories: food waste, and plastic. If our city recycled plastic bags, we’d probably be able to eliminate another 10% or so of our garbage. If we got a composter, I think I could cut down on our waste by a further 20% or so. I’ve thought about that, but I have no idea what I would do with the finished compost, as we don’t have any flower beds or anything like that and I am so, so not flora-oriented. The only thing I could think of was to dump it in the empty lot next door which would only result in even bigger, even stronger weeds with mutant powers, and that didn’t seem like a good idea.
Even though I’m still trying to improve, lately I’ve been thinking about life before recycling and how sad it was. When I was little we used to throw away newspapers — a thought so strange and foreign now, it’s on par with taking your baby in a car with no car seat. I think about all the magazines, phone books, pop cans, jam jars, and tetra packs in landfills and it’s just crazy to think of the tons and tons of that stuff — all recyclable — that is just lying in landfills somewhere.
In fact, I predict that years from now when we are very low on resources, some intrepid company will come up with the idea of excavating landfills to extract the reusable products that are buried there. I may begin work on this idea right now. Huh.
TurtleHead 
It was interesting reading your post, because I think I had a similar experience after I married . Well, it was similar to your experience in that I was amazed when I realized all the stuff that you could recycle, and then sad when I realized how little of it is being done. It was different from your experience in that I had someone always telling me I wasn’t recycling enough, that I should wash out our plastic containers and jars, and separate the paper backing from the plastic packaging, and who would pick things out of the trash and show me the error of my ways. But I’m not bitter :-).
Actually I’m glad now that taught me to recycle. In fact, I think I’m more anal about it sometimes than he is, and I question things that he throws in our recycling bin. Because it’s important not to fill it with stuff that you hope can be recycled, just to make yourself feel good. Instead of getting plastic grocery bags, can you ask for paper? And a lot of the time we get a bag from a store because it’s convenient, not because we really need it, so that’s another thing to consider. You could always bring your own bag, but that’s more stuff to remember to do, which you probably don’t want at this time. Our city takes away our food scraps in our yard waste bin to compost, but if they didn’t I wouldn’t bother with home composting, either.
Garbage day is great, because it’s your way of feeling superior to all your non-recycling neighbours. I’m proud of our teeny-tiny trashcan! Of course, since they don’t recycle diapers here (I’ve heard they do that in Toronto?), we may not be in the tiny bin for much longer.
I like your idea of excavating landfills. In fact, give me a hazmat suit and I think I might enjoy it for a while. You mentioned about how we used to throw away newspapers when we were kids and it’s sad, but what’s cool is that now that you’re more conscious of recycling, CJB and GS will learn about it from you. I think that’s where got it from, as his mom especially is into recycling and composting. Also
The company that does disposable diaper recycling in Toronto is smallplanet. I can’t imagine what they do with the disposables but it sure is an interesting idea. I just figured the Toronto company was the latest in a string but they claim on their site to be the first in the world. Go Toronto! It’s a pretty exciting idea, I think.
The other day we were driving around our crescent. We have lots of dumpsters on our street because so many new houses are going up, and someone who had just moved in had used a dumpster to throw away all their boxes — we’re talking big boxes of corrugated cardboard. Both and I were appalled and we’re still talking about. I can see people not recycling some questionable items or stuff that is annoying to clean or separate, but empty boxes? That’s like throwing away newspapers — I just didn’t think anyone did that anymore.
As for plastic bags, we actually need the ones from the grocery store. We use them for our kitchen and bathroom garbage pails, and to dispose of messier diapers, so we’re actually always in a shortage around here. In terms of our garbage, what I was referring to was plastic bags that stuff is packaged in. Every box of diapers has three or four “inside” bags, every box of wipes has seven “inside” bags, bread bags, milk bags, that sort of thing. It’s the packaging of stuff that we buy that forms the bulk of our plastic waste.
I think it’s so cool that you have food waste pickup at your door. There is an election going on here now for mayor, and and I are going to vote for the guy who is making environmental issues the main part of his ticket. He has a good chance of getting in, so maybe Ottawa will be looking at a program like this soon. His detractors say (of course) that he’ll never find the money to do stuff like this but there’s always hope.
On the weekend my paper shredder finally gave in to the sheer volume of disposal/recycling I’ve been working through as part of converting the office to a nursery (and as barky_shark points out, the fact that I have consistently ignored the “no staples” rule). After having to hand-shred about 200 pieces of paper I’m pretty positive that most people without a shredder probably just throw all that paper in the garbage.
We don’t really have the space for a shredder but I’m not sure how to function without one…
Last week I was at the WalMart and they had a cross-cut shredder on sale for $35. It had two slots. One was for paper, up to 10 sheets at a time (wow!). The other one was for CDs. Seriously! I find it hard to believe a shredder could do that without sounding like an airplane taking off, but it’s still interesting. At the least, I’m sure the CD slot could take care of a few staples with no problem.
How do you even go about hand-shredding stuff? Crimey. That would definitely deter me. I’m thinking of getting the kids to do my shredding…they don’t really need all 10 fingers, do they? Those little ones on the end are expendable!
I think child labour is like anything else, it goes through trends. It just hasn’t been in style for, oh, the last 100 years or so. But you could be a trailblazer!
I find it interesting that you think back to your life before recycling and it makes you sad. What I think is really sad is that I see so many people at work who still don’t give a crap about recycling, who will toss a soda can in their trash rather than walk down the hall to the coffee room to recycle it. I don’t know if it’s laziness or apathy, but either way it looks to me that the recyclers are still in the minority.
Although we’ve gone through a couple of purges where we had a ton of stuff to shred, in general I’ve found shredding pretty manageable — there are usually only a few items a day that need shredding, so if you stay on top of it it probably won’t be a problem.
(Oh, and our shredder apparently is OK with staples, but I always remove them.)
I have to say I find that really shocking. I mean, my grandmother recycles. It’s not hard! It’s not some freaky new-fangled technology thingy!
Did you see my comment above about the people who moved in on our street and threw away their boxes, instead of recycling them? I couldn’t get over it but now I fear they are not that unusual. Around here on garbage day, everyone always has their box out, but they usually have way more garbage bags than we do, too.
Guess I’ll get on that business plan for my landfill excavation company.
I’d be willing to do some covert shredding for you. My company shreds EVERYTHING. (everything written down is “discoverable” so I have the luxury of having locked “shred-it” boxes in every department and Shred-it claims they recycle the shredded paper.
I’d have no problem using some company resources if you’d like me to take some shredding in to work for you…