apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

It's amazing-we also compost and recycle and still manage with only 2 people to create an amazing amount of garbage. Part of that is packaging. I know some stores here (Vancouver) will let you leave packaging behind (London Drugs for example) but I'd say the other 99% don't.

You americans really have to change your enviromental policys. We have had recycling stations in every block since I was a kid. You get almost 0,97 dollars for each pet bottle (a system that we have had for decades. everyone recycles here. it's normal). You will get tax reduction if you buy a enviromental friendly car. Also we work close to our homes and don't have huge freeways all over the place. The air here is great! But the main things you americans have to stop with is thinking that shopping will change anything!

You always think that change will come from buying better green stuff.No! Change will only come by political reforms. I'm no green junkie but you guys really need to get your act together when it comes to these issues!

I also would like to add is that the american way is to put the responsibility on each individual for these issues (which you do with everything else) but in this case it obvious that the individualistic way hasn't worked out.

Toronto has a pretty progressive garbage-collection program. We have to separate our waste into compostable materials (food scraps, etc.), recyclables (the usual) and anything that doesn't fit these categories is deemed garbage. The compostable materials are picked up weekly and garbage and recycling picked up biweekly (they alternate). I'd say that in our household (currently two people) we generally fill less than a large garbage can every two weeks and probably the equivalent in recycling.

I am under 20 pounds.

The best way to reduce the amount of garbage you generate is to buy less.

Another way is to cut back on food packaging. Most garbage is food packaging.

And I think I'm in love with MissL.

Hi roundabout. It is interesting that that is seen as progressive and not the norm? (The method, not the volume)

packaging kills us, too - we luckily have municipal green waste/composting or i'm sure we would not be able to handle composting on our own. our trash is down a lot, but our trash can is always full of mostly plastic packaging that we can't figure out a way around. for instance, we needed new phone headsets this week due to CA's new no-phone-in-the-car law - these tiny things seriously seemed to come in about 1/4 cubic foot of plastic and styrofoam. ugh. i haven't weighed my trash yet but i'm considering writing the date on the bag when we replace it after taking this one out and seeing how long it takes to fill.

we throw away a full bag per day... so that'd be what... about 30-60 pounds a week-ish? it's not MY personal fault eggs come in a package within a package within a package, within a package... egg shells, egg carton, covering foil with stickers, plastic walmart bag... and that's just eggs. Everything else comes with about as many packages (usually the more expensive, the more packaging it has) and if it wasn't it'd be very easy to tamper with (think the tylenol scare). I won't blow it off simply as "not my fault", but I'm not going to go to the furtherest church on my bleeding knees for it either; it's a whole cultural thing and there's VERY little even a HUGE group of people can do about it.

Funny note: When I went to Mexico to visit a few years ago, they had a "trash truck" that passed every week; sort of forcing people to either throw little trash or live with it for a whole week. Most people threw the equivalent to 2 big trash bags per family, and they used a re-usable trash bag... my host family just used separate bags to throw away bathroom trash and much of their food wasn't packaged (fresh veggies, fruits, carbs and protein everyday)... so most of their trash was "American". lol It was a trip.

All of Europe getting a whiff of Naples garbage problem

MissL: starting with "you Americans" really doesn't address the fact that this is a global issue. And really, look at what "political reforms" have done to Europe. And no, you can't say that the main problem with Americans is the shopping and argue that political reform is the only way to turn things around. In one hand, you're arguing individual changes is central while on the other hand arguing that political change is the only way to go. Sorry for pointing out the contradiction, but the anti-American rhetoric only functions to divert the blame from everybody else (Europe did start the industrial revolution, probably the beginning of our collective decline).

Toronto sounds like it has a pretty good system, and Los Angeles has the same system in place. But the root of the problem is that metropolitan Los Angeles is also five times the size of Toronto. No matter how good of an idea you have, once you have to apply it to an exponentially bigger crowd, you either have to make concessions to everyone or accept the fact that it simply won't work as perfectly as one would want it. (If I may add, Vicenza, a mid-sized town in northern Italy, also has a really good recycling program, and still it has a serious trash problem. It's not an American thing.)

Djluckyonline, do you not recycle your egg carton and packaging, walmart bags and compost your eggshells? These things are so easy to do, and get some cloth bags so you don't have to get a plastic bag from walmart.

We live in the least environmentally friendly city in canada (can you guess which one?) that hopes to start curbside recycling next year. But between our recycling depots, bottle exchange, and compost bins, we probably throw out one full bag of trash every 3 weeks

I do agree with MissL, environment must be a government responsibility too, not just each individual

While I also innately objected to the "you Americans" comment [ethnic comments in general never quite coming across correctly, even when meant politely. As an aside, a way to screen for such gaffes may be to insert a traditionally persecuted population such as "you Jews" or "you Blacks" and see if it sounds horribly horribly wrong], I do agree that the government, usually in a local capacity has a lot to do with this issue in particular. I recently spent three years in Tampa, Florida, which had a dismal recycling program which frustrated me for 3 years. (And don't even get me started on the amount of sunshine and dearth of solar power...) We have now moved to North Carolina, and our much smaller city has a much better recycling program -- allowing me and my husband to recycle more than half of our trash generated. It has been truly amazing for me to see what we could have been doing in Florida.

But maybe this is consistent with somedudeinvicenza's comment that the size of the population served is inversely proportional to a local government's capacity to implement progressive programs???

Well, I'm only one person and a cat, so my garbage is pretty minimal. I carry bags when I shop and buy produce at the farmer's market - almost nothing in the way of prepared food. I use flushable cat litter. It's amazing how much trash accumulates in the dumpster at my apartment, though - it's pretty appalling.

I'm pretty good at home (able to recycle a lot of plastics, paper and metal) but at work it is a whole other story. So much of what we use in lab cannot be recycled and is disposable. We're working on the paper recycling, but it appears that the janitorial staff just lumps everything together. Sometimes it seems like the effort I'm making at home is insignificant when compared to what goes on at work.

LOL! Sweeping authorative generalisations about "Europe" or "Here in Europe" (from expats currently in one small corner of the continent) are relentless and pitiless throughout ALL sites in AT.

Somedude... even continues to do it here with, surely not, no sense of irony. What IS that swipe at political reforms in Europe. All of it? England could certainly do with some of the political reforms Sweden has (us being different COUNTRIES n' all) on many issues besides recycling. Conversely, the Industrial Revolution started in Britain, and was developed in N America it has little bearing on what was happening iin Sweden in the 1800's.

Even so there are no recycling concessions to the pretty big crowd in London. Its a must do. No ifs or buts. All ages, all nationalities or viewpoints.

So once you get past the tone of MissL's reply in a second language much of the globe, esp parts of US AND various countries in Europe, could do well to follow Sweden's example.

I'm guessing "under 20" since we normally produce one trash bag per week for the 2 of us. The only time we do more than 1 bag is if we eat a lot of take out, and the takeout boxes take up a lot of room -- but not weight -- in the trash.

We recycle all our junk mail, cardboard boxes, packing materials, etc though. If you included those items, then we would be 20-40lbs/wk. We also have almost no grocery bags in the house since we bring our own pretty consistently. Whatever grocery bags we do have, we recycle/reuse.

I think it depends a great deal on how motivated you are and how much time you have for household tasks. Upper middle class people either have the time or the money to hire someone to sort the trash. If you're barely scraping by, you probably don't have much time to devote to getting stuff to the recycling station, etc. (Here in LA, most multi-family buildings have barely gotten pickups for recycling---my loft building doesn't have it, but we have a huge dumpster.

Also, in the US, fear of identity theft, which is a serious problem, prevents letting people go through your trash to find things to reuse. (Ever been to Egypt? People reuse everything there, in very creative ways.)

But this site is split, just like most people are. We don't need cute little dishes with words on them or napkin rings or 1,000 lovely items, but we want them. And so it goes....

I don't really want the government to attempt to solve this--they screw up everything they touch and just make bigger waste. Saying that "the government will fix it" is a good way to avoid responsibility. Some clever person will find a way to make money from my trash, and I trust that person more than the GS-13 at a desk.

My brother in law is an engineer at a waste plant that basically turns trash into electricity.

I wonder why all municipalities don't have this.

I am a proud member of the "Give A Hoot. Don't Pollute." generation and have been actively doing (and improving) my part in helping "keep America, looking good."

Living in Oakland, CA I get spoiled by our green waste/composting and recycling system. But in the rural Pennsylvania town my boyfriend grew up in they have no city recycling system at all. They just throw everything in the garbage. It frustrates and appalls me every time I visit. I sometimes forget we live in a bubble here in the Bay Area.

I live in an apartment building and was surpised to find that there weren't any recycling bins. I asked the owner about this and he said that the company that takes the trash actually has a material recovery facility where they actually pull all recycleable materials from the trash. I thought that sounded a bit fishy but I just called the company (Athens Services) and I guess it's true. I still feel really wierd putting glass jars and plastic bottles containers in with everything else. Anyone else have this same situation?

I feel like I always have way too many of those little plastic containers that everything from Trader Joe's comes in. I don't know why everything from there has to be in a plastic container. It's weird, too, because I always considered them more earth-conscious than larger supermarkets.

Well, the Trader Joe's stuff is recyclable. Their earth-consciousness is great PR, isn't it?


And Athens probably makes some money pulling the glass out--most recycling programs end up costing the municipality more money, which is why the small town in PA doesn't have the funds or the program, and why it costs so much to live in CA.

I have tons of trash, and I just couldn't figure it out.

I started using SMALL bags for trash so I could see everything in it, and my trash is almost all packaging and junk mail. That's it. It is mostly food packaging, (cereal boxes, take out boxes, milk cartons), and mail. Almost all my mail goes from box to trash. I don't know how to make that stop. I have registered at the various places to make junk mail stop, but it only helps so much.

I fill a 45 gallon size trash bag every week, but I don't know the weight.

Some amazing Canadians started the Red Dot Campaign to cut down on junk mail. I signed up in February and the amount of un-addressed mail and flyers that used to pass briefly through my mailbox en route to the recycling bin is now almost zip. See http://www.reddotcampaign.ca/ - there's a link to a similar US site called Forest Ethics.

I throw out about two small grocery bags of trash per week, which puts me way under 20 pounds, I think. My secret is that I reuse everything until it falls apart. I buy olives from Whole Foods constantly, and I've had one of those containers they provide for about three months now (the last one cracked when I dropped it). I also avoid putting my produce in those plastic bags, recycle baggies for my meat and cheese from the deli counter (I would bring my own but then the weight would be different), and recycle any and all other packaging.

It was hard at first, but now it's just second nature.

We generate far more trash than the average two-person household, but as I've commented in other posts before, my S/O does dialysis at home, so we don't have any good options. At least we're not spending hundreds of dollars making a 70-mile round trip three times per week like we were when he was doing dialysis at a clinic.

Also, as residents of a rural area, we have NO recycling programs in place. Several folks on Freecycle have researched options, and basically we have to drive 30-plus miles to a college town to drop off recycling. Not at all affordable. Local governments aren't willing to pay for recycling programs -- they say they're doing the best they can by providing residents with dump areas.

One small bag of trash per week and one larger bag of recycling per month (maybe 5 lbs total?). I quit buying things because at 52 I have everything I need. After house tax, insurance and utilities I live on $300 a month, so there's very little waste in my life. Happily retired, I do yoga, walk, garden, compost, spend time with family and friends, volunteer and am thankful that I don't feel compelled to work hard to make money to buy things I don't really need. Living a simple life can be very gratifying.

If we really want to see how we're doing is it fair to combine recycling and composting weights into the general "trash" pound figure? Not to split hairs, but we put out one full recycle bin a week and about a 1/4 full trash bin every other week. My next door neighbors put out a full trash bin every week and rarely a recycle bin. Should we be compared equally since our pounds of trash is similar?

Lesley - London: As you can tell from my comment, never did I say "here in Europe." The comment was merely for the purpose of illustrating how a "you Americans" comment has little relevance to discussing a "you everyone" problem. And any sweeping generalization about the US is as dull as any sweeping generalization about Europe. "You Americans" bear different meanings for people in Los Angeles, New York, or Omaha. Obviously giving your approval to those generalizations display the lack of knowledge that you accuse "those expats" of having...without the irony, no less. (I mean, what's up with irony anyway? What did Sartre say about irony, that's it shows more your discomfort of your ignorance than the depth of your knowledge?)

What's the swipe with the political reforms in Europe? Well, to illustrate that political reforms are either grudgingly passed and grudgingly followed, or not really as effective as they should be. True, London may have a strict recycling program, but two caveats: it only came about when the problem has become too big, and London still has a serious garbage issue despite this no-tolerance policy. And true, we should follow Sweden's initative in a lot of things, but it's very hard to emulate a homogenous society (both culturally and economically) and apply their values to a place like Los Angeles. (Oh yeah, if you think what was happening in industry in the US and Britain during the 19th century had no bearing on Sweden...uh, go and re-read your history books.)

Bottom line: let's all try to recycle and save mother earth. But please, leave the self-righteousness out. Being the the d-bag who gets to be better than everybody else is and never was much fun.

All for leaving the self-righteousness out, somedude!

I like irony tho’. My “surely not” was also an - ironic - joke. As in "Americans have no...etc" when I know quite a few who do. From those parts of America I have visited, of course ;-)

Agreed with the view on Britain and North America’s impact on Sweden in your more recent post. Thought including Sweden as a collective Europe responsible for “the beginning of our collective decline” re the Industrial Revolution was up to a Brit (particularly one from Lancashire like me) to do the “mea culpa” thing instead.

Anyhow, on-topic. Sweden, recycling good. Germany too. Thought the Times article took UK quotes out of context from a clippings file and was maybe dated. But yes, we do have to take it very seriously being such a tiny overpopulated country. I have found it interesting from these posts that the LA approach is much more voluntary than I had imagined. I think LA was the first place I ever SAW aluminium recycling and that was nearly 20 years ago.

I really should remember to use ". ' - doesn't show in preview, apologies. UK keyboard.

the toronto system isn't necessarily entirely like that. with all the condo building going on we're missing out on those dwellers. as far as i know, unless there's individual motivation... composting is virtually inaccessible.

and i have found that on a smaller scale the system is much more efficient. when i was in a smaller university down (still in ontario) we were able to recycle plastic wrap, styrofoam, plastic bags, etc. but toronto doesn't seem to be capable of this. our only options are to return them to companies who aren't frequently advertised as able and willing to take it all back.

Is it not typical that you are blamed fo "ANTI-AMERICAN - RETHORIC" when you try to point out any kind of problems with american society.