Jag ([info]agrajag) wrote,
@ 2006-10-24 23:45:00
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Garbage
Do you ever find yourself wondering what's in other people's garbage?

I've never had that desire, until today. And not just to see what my neighbor's lives are like. But more to find out what they could possibly be consuming to generate so much garbage.

I forgot to take out my garbage last week, so I made a point of taking it out today. I picked up the not quite full bag from the kitchen and tossed it in the garbage can. That not-full bag is the only garbage I have from the past two weeks. I then took the garbage and recycling out to the curb and looked around. Some of my neighbors have huge bags of stuff sitting on top of their recycling bins. Bags much bigger than my bag, bigger than my garbage and recycling combined. That combined with their full recycling bin means they're recycling 2-3 times as much as I'm recycling/throwing out. And I know that only a small percentage of what's consumed can be recycled. So I find myself wondering, just what do people consume that causes so much garbage? I'm only a single guy and most of my neighbors have families, but the proportions still seem way off.

The irony is that I actually think I don't do enough to reduce how much garbage I generate.

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[info]ymasen
2006-10-25 02:36 am UTC (link)
Some ideas:
They have babies and have diapers
They're menstrating women and have pads & tampons
They cook at home 7 days a week and make their own lunches and have milk cartons, chicken bones, or other food prep remains.

Just an idea... my parents are recyclers and w/them and keeping the grandkids a few days a week they typically end up with a full garbage can every 2 weeks. If you think about how much "garbage" you create but leave at any given restaurant you may realize you're not that different from your neighbors.

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[info]agrajag
2006-10-25 02:52 am UTC (link)
I don't eat out nearly as much as I used to. I eat out four, maybe five meals a week. And I bring my lunch.

Granted, I don't drink anything but water most of the time, so I don't have milk cartons or soda bottles, etc.

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[info]faebouche
2006-10-25 04:07 am UTC (link)
Yeah, soda cans really add up fast in the recycling bin. I stopped drinking soda at home about a year ago, and I was blown away at how much trash they make when Aaron was drinking lots of diet coke here this summer.

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[info]arcturus [deadjournal]
2006-10-25 01:12 pm UTC (link)
I think pre-packaged meals probably have more waste. Those usually have a carton (and maybe a cooking pan) for each meal. Whereas if I make something at home, I've used one pot and have maybe one jar and a small box to get of, along with compostable scraps, after making dinner. And if you bring home take-out, you get a large volume of wrappers and containers to throw out. Soda cans and bottles also add up quickly, and if I recall, Jag doesn't drink much in the way of soda.

Eric and I eat out about once a month as a big treat, so the rest is at home. We usually generate one paper grocery bag of garbage a week, and a plastic grocery bag of scrap paper and bathroom stuff every couple of weeks. Once a month we take a large paper bag or two of glass out to be recycled. Of course, I inexplicably feel ashamed every time I take out a bag of trash, so that might have something to do with our lack of trash. But I do wonder about people who have piles of trash on their curbs every week. From the sounds of things, Amy's parents generate about as much trash, per person, as Jag. That's a lot different from the families with 3 trash cans. :-)

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[info]arcturus [deadjournal]
2006-10-25 01:14 pm UTC (link)
I should have proofread. Obviously, when I cook at home the pot doesn't get thrown away, unlike the ready-to-cook prepackaged dinners.

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[info]waterdragon
2006-10-25 03:56 am UTC (link)
We have a lot of trash for some reason, the plastic/cans recycling bin is almost always full. And somehow even after that and the paper recycling our normal garbage ends up filling up.

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[info]skvidal
2006-10-25 05:37 am UTC (link)
If you want to start decreasing the waste you toss out try composting. It's really pretty simple and after a little while it's painfully obvious. I'm sure you've got a fair number of deciduous trees around your house. So you have lots of carbon matter. Add some nitrogen in the form of your non-animal waste food products and you can be composting in no time.

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[info]htnatch
2006-10-25 05:44 pm UTC (link)
I have always been amazed at the two, sometimes three trashcans full of trash that we toss out every week. (Okay, once in a while it's just one, but that's rare.) There are three of us and two of us are at home all day. I cook most meals at home.

The trash bin in the kitchen seems to fill up quickly when I'm cooking; cans, bottle, wrappers... We don't have a gargage disposal, but not much gets wasted from meals.

I don't buy much beyond weekly groceries, so there aren't a lot of other packages to throw away. I reuse plastic bags.

Go figure.

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[info]bado
2006-10-28 02:40 pm UTC (link)
We have noticed the same thing in our neighborhood. At first we chalked it up to people just moving in, and getting rid of packing material and what not . . . but week after week they have trash cans that are so full the lid is at a 45 degree angle. Some of these houses are families, but some are young couples with no kids. We do a lot of cooking at home, and at most we have had 4 small kitchen bags in the container (This was after we cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my family last year, and later after clean up from New Years). I don't know what they do . . .Though I must admit, I usually try to buy items with reduced packaging or reusable packaging. I doubt that that can make up for all that trash tho . . .

Like you, I still think i don't do enough to reduce the solid waste generated at my house. I am looking into composting options and plan to buy a composting system in the next year. This will actually cut our waste by probably a third.

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What I toss
[info]etselec
2006-11-03 03:26 pm UTC (link)
I also don't generate that much in the way of garbage, and can skip a week without much trouble. But I think the bulk of what I do throw out ends up being used kitty litter. That can add up.

This week when I took out the recycling, I had two overflowing containers of empty alcohol bottles from the party I threw last week. What must my neighbors think??

Also, I have to say that I get the creeps about someone potentially looking through my garbage, mostly because of the movie "Kiss The Girls" and the fact that I had a stalker for a while... *shudder*

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