No Impact Week: Consumption and Garbage

On Days 1 and 2 of my HuffPost No Impact Week experiment, my first thought was to reconsider some wise words from my favorite provider of quotes -- my mom.  She loves to point out that when we throw something away, there is really no such thing as "away."  That concept is simple and true, yet so easily overlooked in an age where comfort and convenience are king.  Even for the meticulous recyclers -- those of us who diligently sort every piece of refuse, packing each banana peel and empty milk jug into separate bags and putting them into the appropriate bins at the curb -- the false promise of "away" still cushions us.  After all, once we close the lid of the recycling bin and continue to go about our lives, what happens to all of that stuff?  As if by magic, it is taken "away," and we never have to think about it again...right?

Of course, we all know that isn't the case.

As for me, I am certainly guilty of indulging in the illusion of "away."  It is overwhelming to think of all the stuff we are constantly adding into the waste stream, which makes it so much easier to feel good about recycling and leave it at that.  I realize this isn't the most productive of mindsets, however, which is why I appreciated the alternate perspective offered by the Day 1 challenge: reconsidering consumption.  After all, the less stuff I buy, the less garbage I will contribute, and the less I'll have to worry and/or feel guilty about where it goes, right?  Do you remember that old adage, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"?  It's great that recycling has become so much simpler and more efficient these days, but that element of simplicity is a double-edged sword, making it all too easy to forget that we are supposed to Reduce and Reuse before we Recycle.

When a few of my coworkers and I started an Eco Committee in NRDC's Santa Monica office, one of the first things we did was to conduct a waste audit.  My Eco Committee cohort Margaret (who has now left NRDC to start her own sustainable gardening business!) wrote a good blog post about our experience.  What we learned during the audit was that we could eliminate a lot of our office's waste -- nearly a quarter of it, actually -- by converting food scraps into compost.  Now that our composting program is off the ground, all those food scraps have become a valuable resource for our local gardeners, and as each of us throws our pizza crusts and apple cores into the countertop green bin, we can feel the positive vibes generated by helping to create healthy soil instead of plain ol' trash.

Looking closely at our garbage was kind of a smelly undertaking, but the process of storing the contents of our office's trashcans each day for a week, then sorting and weighing it, really helped us become more educated (and realistic!) about the role we all have in creating waste.  Perhaps even more so than in our homes, it is so easy to throw things "away" in an office setting.  After all, when I put something in the garbage or recycling bin under my desk -- voila!  It automatically disappears overnight!  Ah, it's the beguiling trickery of "away," again.

By taking a closer look, we discovered that 53% of our office's waste was recyclable, while 25% was regular garbage.  When we organized a trip to our local recycling facility so we could get a handle on the afterlife of our garbage, it was heartening to see how much material the residents and businesses of Santa Monica are able to recycle, but I still felt taken aback by the sheer volume of it -- all those boxes, cans, packages, and wrappers squeezed into bales and stacked into heaps many stories high.  Sure it's all being recycled, but wouldn't it be better if we didn't create so much of it to begin with?

Looking at the garbage and recycling bins under my own kitchen sink yesterday, it struck me that most of the stuff I end up throwing away consists of packaging.  How is it that I can fill up an entire recycling bin with empty plastic and cardboard containers in a matter of days?  And what was even in those packages to begin with?  I can hardly remember.  Yesterday, the first "No Impact" task was to think about my purchasing plans for the week and try to cut out whatever I didn't truly need.  The one thing I do need to buy is food, but even my grocery shopping habits could use improvement.  Although I always use my trusty reusable canvas bags to schlep my groceries home, I still have to deal with the fact that the box holding the soymilk, the bag enclosing the spaghetti, and the jar containing the tomato sauce are all going to be added to the waste stream.  The good news, however, is that freshly harvested, locally grown fruits and veggies don't come in a package, so this week I've decided to see if I can limit myself to buying only food from the farmers' market.

So far, this experiment has turned out to be quite fun, actually.  Last night I cooked up a batch of homemade, organic veggie broth using fresh onions, carrots, garlic, celery, bay leaves, and thyme.  It smelled fantastic (if I dosay so myself) and the aroma was only augmented by the fresh-baked, homemade bread my boyfriend decided to contribute to the cause.  Tonight I'll use the broth to make a soup for us to dunk the bread in, and maybe tomorrow I can put together some homemade veggie burgers to use up the rest of the loaf.  My mouth is already watering just thinking about it, and already we've saved quite a few items from the trash and recycling bins -- one bread bag, one TetraPak of store-bought broth (or a couple of cans from store-bought soup), plus the cardboard box and inner plastic wrappers of a pack of burgers.  We'll probably save a couple bucks, to boot...and that's just dinner!

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