WASTE!!!

For two days, I tracked how much waste I made. In order to make it slightly simpler for myself, I included our accumulative household waste for the most part. We ended up filling up two trash bags in that amount of time. Yep- that's two 5 gallon trash bags of just trash. At work I only had a few things to throw away, the majority of my trash was made at home. The biggest amount of what we were using were food product packaging, plastic bags for produce and things like mushroom containers, meat wrappings (I'm the only vegetarian in the house), and boxes of empty food items. The other major trash items were things like paper towels and paper plates. We always go through recyclable items such as aluminum cans and glass bottles, and within these two days I could fill a plastic bag with the recyclables.

 

Then- I tried reducing how much waste was coming out of our household for another two days. The first day I tried to reduce our food trash by buying produce that I could put in recyclable bags. When I bought my produce I used reusable bags to minimise the plastic bag usage and packaging. We reduced the amount of soda and adult beverages in the household for these two days. We only produced 4 cans.

 

Unfortunately one of my days was very disrupted, as my puppy got out of the backyard and ran away. :( This was cause for almost no trash created as none of us were home or eating. The only trash that was created was the take out we ordered late that night because I had no energy to cook, nor did I even want to try. The waste that was created that day was tissues. I should have probably used a cloth towel or something of the sort, but my head was not in the game. With that being said, I would like to try this experiment again when I have a more stable testing period. I did notice that we only had one small bag of trash that was created in these two days. I'm not sure if it was due to the changes I attempted to make, or simply because our rhythm was so messed up within the house.

 

Going forward I'm going to make a much stronger attempt of always buying my produce unpacked and with my own bags. I would like to try to reduce meat containers, but being that I'm so picky about meat touching anything else- this will take more time and some trial and error methods to figure out what works for us.

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. I know this is decently unrelated, but this is my Bonnie girl. If anyone has seen her or if anyone does see her, please let me know. There is a reward available. I just want my puppy home. :(