Don’t throw your rubbish away for a year…

Dave Chameides is an environmental educator and freelance filmmaker. He writes alternative fuel articles for Edmunds.com, and maintains the blogs 365 Days of Trash and Achieving Sustainability. While he is presently saving all of his trash for a year to better understand his environmental impact, his main focus is sustainability through education and he believes that with knowledge all things are possible. In the first of a series of guest blogs, he talks about not throwing anything away for a year.

When was the last time you threw something “away”? Did you think about it? What you were getting rid of? Where it came from? Where it was going?

When was the last time you threw something away? I did 1 min ago

Well, until January 1st of this year, I was right there with you my friend. Throwing things “away” without ever thinking about where “away” was, what it looked like, or whether it would ever connect back to me.

And then I stopped.

That’s right, I stopped.

On January 1st 2008 I began a year long experiment of keeping all my trash and recycling in my basement. Now I know what you are saying “He’s crazy, he’s a nut job, Recycle.co.uk has gone off the deep end” and I can’t say as I blame you for thinking it. On the surface it seems like an irrational thing to do (it doesn’t get much better if you look down in the basement either), but before you all click away, let’s think about this for a minute.

Try thinking about what happens to your waste…

For the past 8 months, everything that I have disposed of has gone down in my basement after being noted on my blog. I know what it was, where it came from, and where it has gone. I can quantify it, play with it if I so desire (I don’t), sing to it (no comment) and even re-use it a month or two later should I find a need. As a result of this new consciousness and the changes in my purchasing choices it has brought, my eight month trash total is just around 30 lbs as opposed to the national average which would put me at around 900.

In the process of my experiment, I’ve started a worm composter, switched from plastic milk bottles to glass (didn’t even know these existed anymore), have started French pressing my java in the morning, and have all but eliminated my junk mail. And that’s just for starters.

Worm composts - a great way to destroy your waste, and have pets!

But I think the thing that I’ve learned the most about was how hard it was to change a basic habit that I was used to. Try training yourself to never throw anything away and you’ll see what I mean. Having said that, now that I have gotten used to it, I don’t even think of heading for the garbage can anymore. It’s actually become a part of my routine. And that got me to thinking.

The “solutions” that we all read about daily are all out there, yet many find it hard to change. For some it’s a matter of not knowing where to start, for some a question of information, and for some a tendency to give up due to how overwhelming it all can be.

Well fear not eco sensitive reader. Starting with my next post, we’ll take one issue at a time, explore it, and work towards fixing it. We’ll spend a few posts going over the problems associated with something, say bottled water, and then I’ll throw out some simple ways to make cutting them out altogether easier. Finally, I’ll ask everyone to pledge to go without for a week and then we’ll all check back in and see how things went. My hope is that by the end of 12 months, we’ll all be much farther along than where we are today, and the difference we make will add up. Simple right?

Just imagine the difference if you only have 30lbs of rubbish a year

And lest you think that I have all the answers (I don’t just ask my wife) I’ll be looking for your ideas and feedback to come up with even better alternatives. After all, we’re all in this together right?

So how about it?

Ready to start walking the talk?

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