Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Trash talk

It seems America is slowly becoming aware of how important recycling is. Our local trash company switched to one GIANT recycle bin that we can throw everything with the little arrow symbol into except glass, that goes in a little bin instead.
Anyway.... we have been averaging only 1 tall kitchen bag of trash a week. Everything else is either composted or recycled. I am pretty proud of that and think we are doing good for a family of our size.
Recycling and giving away things instead of tossing them work but I think for us composting has been a surprisingly significant reduction in our trash. We had lots of forgotten leftovers and food scraps going in the trash bag and now they are getting our garden ready.

So, how many bags of trash does your house produce? Any tips on reducing trash? I would love to see some helpful comments

2 comments:

Ella+Felix Mama said...

I am also proud of our 1 kitchen bag's worth of trash per week, while our large blue bin is usually full. We are trying to reduce our footprint this year too. Our biggest change this year has been switching to making beans in the crockpot instead of buying canned beans. Cost-wise it makes so much more sense too, you can buy a 1 lb bag of dried beans for about a dollar which makes about three or four can's worth of beans, maybe more, I haven't measured but it seems about that much. You can use a 1 lb bag of black beans for tacos, black bean soup, etc. or freeze some of them for later. Like you say, though, that also takes planning ahead.

Ella+Felix Mama said...

Sorry, one more thought, have you seen "The Story of Stuff"? http://storyofstuff.com/