This morning we sprung out of bed early and made it a plan to get our home in order. Vacuuming, cleaning, and putting away things and placing them in their appropriate spots. We'd say we're about 60% done (oh, the closet), but we came away wondering about how much waste we produce on average after taking out the trash and recyclables. Since switching to disposing our non-meat leftovers to a compost bin and mostly avoiding shopping at big box stores, we think our weekly trash total has dropped to about 1.5 bags of garbage and 1 bag of recyclable packaging material (mostly from items sent to us for review), compared to about 2-3 bags per week for 2 people and 2 cats in our household....
How about yourselves? Abby asked a similar question earlier this year, but we don't normally weigh our trash output and mostly measure by total bags that hit curbside. And be sure to mention how many are in your household, since we understand this corresponds directly with the total.
We've consider going plastic trash bagless, but this isn't such a great idea when you have to dispose of cat litter regularly, so we just try to keep it in check and stick to paper bags for our recyclable collection (and yes, we bring reusable canvas bags when we shop). Donating instead of throwing out, throwing a yard sale, and just offering our friends extraneous items has culled our total possessions and waste output quite a bit too (trust us, let it go...you'll feel better after the initial discomfort of giving "it" up).
Beth put together an excellent list of ways to cull back your weekly trash output here. The one we're battling is the ongoing delivery of junk mail, despite contacting a million junk mail lists to stop the insanity (yet another reason to shop local). We've also given up on bottled water except in exceptional circumstances while traveling (Kleen Kanteens are excellent replacements). We guess our next step is do a trash audit and break down exactly what and where the bulk of our waste is coming from and make necessary changes. But perhaps after the holidays, since the amount of trash during the holidays is always exceptionally more than normal.
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rarely do i toss more than one and a full blue bin of recycling my newspapers/cans/glass/plastics.
the city i live is instituting a green box recycling program in the new year for food waste, but i have picked out the perfect spot in my garden for a composter.
It's not the garbage from home that has me concerned anymore (I'm down to about a paper-bag's worth a week, the rest is recycled paper which is mostly junk mail)
It's the garbage from work and while traveling: all the lunch bags & covered food containers, containers from frozen entrees, single-use teabag packets, plastic waterbottles (You can't use your own bottles when you travel by air, and do the airlines bother to recycle all those plastic water cups and paper napkins?)
Sure there are recycling bins in the office - but I'd guess that I easily create more garbage at work than I do at home.
2-3 bags a week is about right for my family, and we're two people and two cats. A lot of that is cat waste and takeout containers, which I'd like to avoid, but it's hard because my husband's hours at work are erratic. It still shocks me how such a small family can produce so much trash in a week. And that doesn't even include recycling - that's probably another 1-2 paper bags full every week.
just 1 little bag for a 3-person household. i seriously cannot sing the virtues of municipal composting loud enough! pizza boxes, coffee cups, meat, bones, eggs, egg cartons, milk cartons, leftovers, moldy leftovers, trader joe's compostable plastic trays, paper towels, paper towel rolls...when we're done with our "kitchen scraps" we hardly have anything left to toss. it's the best and i get anxious about possibly moving to a place that doesn't have an anything-goes green waste bin :(
I'm at a bag about every week and a half to two weeks, for just me. Recycling goes at roughly the same pace, I guess.
About a grocery sack every week or two.
I'm at a bag every 1-2 weeks (depending on how much I cook and what I cook) typically for just myself. I've started recycling more and more junk mail and shredded paper, which in the past I used to just throw in the dumpster.
We have about a bag a week, and a full blue recycling bin every two weeks. We also compost in our own back yard. Our family is two humanfolk and one puppygirl.
bepsf - i learned a great travel trick from a friend of my mom's. she brings an empty water bottle (or canteen) through security. then, she fills it up at the water fountain in the terminal. no disposable plastic bottles of water needed!
We toss 2 and occasionally 3 bags a week - and there are nine of us... I really loathe packaging and try very hard to buy products without it. I am also quite mad about not bringing things into our home that we will want to to throw out - no.no.no.. My mother in law (1 of her!!!) is always saying you have so much garbage... um person for person we somehow manage to do a lot better than she does... I guess that is what they call economy of scale!
One 13-gallon bag per week for 2 people and 1 rabbit. The bulkiest items are plastic/styrofoam boxes and takeout containers, and litter from the litterbox. Without those two things it would be way less. I guess this would be a good incentive for me to stop ordering takeout.
i throw out a bag of trash every 2-3 weeks. I recycle most everything.
1 garbage bin for a family of four living in a community with no recycling facilities (and before anyone gets on their high horse about this, we're on an island, which means that any recycling facility has to be built on the island, which takes time and money, or stuff shipped far away...which is what they do in Vancouver - ship off to China - and that somewhat defeats the purpose of recycling).
I take out 1 bag (8-gal) of trash and 1 "bag" (8-gal) of recycling a week.
Since I started sending compost to some friends that compost in their yard, I take out a large bag of garbage only once every few weeks/once a month? Also since my building started recycling a lot more stuff, that's cutting down on a lot too. I'm thinking of getting a smaller trash can and selling the one I have on CL and freeing up some space. I might be able to use primarily paper bags for trash too. The only thing I carry to the trash maybe a couple of times a week is a plastic bag full of scoop outs from the litter box. The litter only needs to be changed about every 4-6 weeks and goes into a paper grocery bag which goes into the plastic trash bag with the rest of the trash.
1 human here 1 cat.
I've found that with all of the recycling I do, I seldom take out more than one small bag every other week. It helps that I live in a dorm-type situation and am a volunteer who can't even afford to buy anything and don't have a Target in my town.
But now I'm moving and I'm appalled at how much I have recycled/thrown out/donated! From my little room I have thrown out two big bags, put four big bags in the thrift store pile, and recycled another two big bags worth! I don't understand where it all came from and I wish that it would pick itself up and not make me do it!
1 city purchased, $2.50 garbage bag every two weeks for our family of 2 adults, 1 teen, 2 dogs and 1 cat. We compost for our garden, recycle at a station at the grocery store. It works pretty well for us. I think the charge per bag is an incentive to reduce your waste. We try to be inventive in reusing things we would have thrown away in the past. Plastic food containers make nice seed starters especially the ones with clear plastic lids.
For 2 adults, we average 1.5 bags of trash and 1 bag of recycling per week.
But this guy does it better, a whole year without throwing anything out.
http://365daysoftrash.blogspot.com/
Wow. Amazing. How can a family of 2 and 2 cats only throw out 3 bags a week? Well, I guess when you have a 16 year old dog that pees in the house whereever and wheever she wants . . .the paper towel adds up. A LOT OF IT. And she does go outside, but often comes back in and pees inside. Mia is 14 and pees in the house too. We have four dogs in all and it is my mom and I. We recycle the big gallon plastic water bottles and the smaller 2 liter bottles of soda. Rarely purchase soda and I never purchase cans. So, how many 13 gallon bags do we trash each WEEK? Get ready. I may blow your mind. About 5-6 a week. If we are spring cleaning that week, it could be 8 that week. We shred our junk mail once every 3 weeks and we get a lot of junk mail, we don't want anyone seeing our name or address etc. Shredding takes up 7 gallons very fast. So I guess our little 2 human family with 4 dogs - I guess we waste a lot.