Friday, March 18, 2011

Trash

DAY 355

My “ride the bus” month did not happen – at all. I could not quite get it together to make the time to get the schedule, find the stops and build in the buffer travel time. I will table this challenge for a challenge month in my second year of Nothing New! I have decided to stay on this track for another year, implement all my learnings from this year and apply them on a new level in Year Two. More to follow on my plans for ramping things up for Part Deux!

Meanwhile, I have been tracking how much trash I create as a challenge – started on 2/18 and just finished on 3/18...I was inspired by my friend Rebecca’s lifestyle changes and commitments to reduce what she contributes to the landfill. See her post on February 14. I will not list every piece of trash here – as fascinating as that would be – I will give you an overview of the last 20 days, how’s that?

I work hard to compost first, recycle second then throw it out. So much can be composted and I am amazed at how it all works out there in my compost pile – even in the winter. I have an inherited dark green plastic compost container (thanks JoeyO!) and dump a 10 gallon bucket of biodegradable yumminess :)out there once a week or so. Every time I go out and make a deposit, the pile is back down to where it was the week before - a tiny little miracle of nature. I feel good about this AND I am concerned that composting is a bright spot it my life, but hey, whatever it takes right? Check this website out to join the thousands of happy peppy people who compost! http://www.howtocompost.org/

Thankfully, my town recycles and picks up my large clear trash bag of paper, glass and aluminum once a week. I appreciate this and am glad to have recycling in my habit skill set. Most of the recycle bag is filled with paper....argh...paper! So much paper. Junk mail – catalogs, newsletters, promotions – on and on – I call and get off their lists any time I can. Envelopes with annoying cellophane windows that I remove and throw away dominate the paper mix along with juice bottles and cat food cans, laundry soap bottles and other grocery related containers. As I write this, I realize I have a lot of room for reducing the amount of stuff I recycle! The juice dilemma is such that there is always a non-recyclable lid or pull tab. Need to find a good alternative here...any ideas? Make my own OJ? With real oranges? Hmmmm...I should also cut back and then eliminate the canned cat food...must discuss this with Buddy and Curtis.

Because of my efforts, I ended up with three medium sized bags of trash for the month (down from four) and three big bags of recyclables (up from two). I will measure one more month to see if I can reduce my recyclables with some shopping habit changes.

More to follow – Have a Nothing New Day! ~Kristin

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