The State of the Garbage Report

Kitchen and general household garbage (we’ll look at the bathroom trash later).

This was always by far the greatest proportion of our household’s garbage. Before we started this “kick,” we averaged two to four “kitchen-sized” garbage bags a week full of trash (not counting holidays, such as Christmas, which could create giant trash excesses).

Drumroll please. . .

As of Friday, 10 December, 2010, the lowest week’s worth of garbage we’ve had is TWO, half-gallon milk cartons, not entirely full, of garbage.

That’s it; that is all we threw “away” for an entire week.

What was in those milk cartons?

Well, the worst “offenders” were the milk cartons themselves. They are just flat not recyclable here, although I’m told that there are places where they have that capability. Apparently, you need special machinery to separate the plastic (!!!) coating from the paper carton. What, I ask you, would be wrong with going back to biodegradable wax coating on the paper cartons???

We actually have five additional cartons like these (one almond milk, two orange juice, and two organic nonfat milk in addition to the two others that were used as trash receptacles) that have been emptied and not thrown “away.” So technically, we produced more than just the two full of junk. Rather than throw them all “away,” we have decided we could at least reuse some of them: we have designated one to hold general “food waste”--compostable stuff--and one of them is just collecting eggshells--we have some roses growing outside, and the eggshells will be welcomed by them as soil amendments in the spring. I’m not sure what we will do with the others; it may be that we will have to throw them “away” as well.

So what was actually inside the two cartons that were thrown “away?”

Well, small bits of plastic--like the caps for those milk cartons, and the plastic “stopper” or whatever you want to call it that you have to remove after you remove the cap, in order to truly open the carton. And WHAT, I ask you, was wrong with the cartons that just pulled open and pressed closed, requiring NO plastic cap and no “stopper”--and incidentally, allowing you to pour ALL of the milk or juice out, which this current arrangement does NOT, unless you DO pull the entire top open???!
Other garbage included other caps, like the plastic tops of the glass bottles of salad dressing we buy (which no doubt we could make fresher and cheaper ourselves, but that would still leave us with--), the plastic tops of the glass bottles of olive oil or other oils or vinegar, which I DON’T think we could reasonably expect to make ourselves, and random bits of plastic that were mummifying products like the Feliway Comfort Zone thing.

I think that is IT. That is all of our kitchen and general household garbage.
We do have a container (originally a cookie jar) in the kitchen that is now designated to hold the little plastic windows of the DeBoles Organic Spinach Fettucini boxes (remember those?). My plan is to save up a bunch of them and mail them to DeBoles, with a letter asking them ever-so-nicely if they wouldn’t mind recycling them for me, as the #5 plastic is not recyclable in my area. If they insist on including this not-easily-recyclable feature in the boxes, then they will have to deal with the garbage they are creating. Perhaps the concrete demonstration will encourage them to “look into alternatives,” as their rep assured me they were, FASTER.

If you agree with me that it is silly to be mummifying everything we buy in everlasting garbage, please read and sign my petition:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/to-the-end-of-the-earth/