A Peek into My Trashcan

I spent the afternoon digging through my trash. On the one hand, it was pretty fascinating since, like most people, we toss things in the trash without a second thought and promptly forget what's in there. On the other hand, it stunk.

I tried to make a conscious effort this week not to purposely censor my trash just because I knew I'd be showing everyone, and I thought our trash was looking pretty good. Then I woke up on Saturday morning, walked into the kitchen, and said, "Oh, crap."

You see, my husband hosted a poker party on Friday night, and several things found their way into my house that wouldn't normally be there. Like a Velveeta cheese package. And beer bottles. There were also two tortilla chip bags, a styrofoam cup, and some cans of Monster, which wouldn't normally be in our trash but still manage to find their way in on occasion.

We also didn't get a CSA pick-up this week, which unfortunately meant we ate a lot fewer vegetables. I think our food scraps are normally twice what is pictured here, and it's definitely more than our worms can handle - especially during the winter when they don't eat as much.

A Week's Worth of Trash

Disposables:

• diapers
• toilet paper (used as facial tissue)
• food scraps
• milk lids
• random scraps of paper
• plastic packaging
• 2 superglue dispensers
• 1 nightlight bulb
• clementine box
• 3 cereal bags
• 1 cheese package
• 1 sugar bag
• 1 tortilla bag
  
• 2 tortilla chip bags
• 1 velveeta cheese wrapper
  
• styrofoam cup with lid and straw
• cocoa tub
• broken belt
• tie from sweatpants
• broken sunglasses
• dried-out marker
• random craft pieces

Recyclables (not pictured):

• 2 milk jugs
• 3 soymilk containers
• 3 fruit cans
• 1 olive can
• 1 tomato can
• several beer bottles
• several Monster cans
  
• 3 cereal boxes
• 1 velveeta cheese box
• random pieces of paper from First Son's school, our art projects, and junk mail.
  

Compostables (not pictured - fed to worms)

• 3 yogurt containers of carrot peels, apple cores, sandwich crusts, and other miscellaneous food scraps
  

A few notes about some of the items:

Diapers: We use cloth during the day and disposables at night because my kids get terrible rashes when we try cloth at night. The babe that's in diapers now has about six more months, I think, until we'll be done with diapers for good.

Random scraps of paper: This included colored paper (which our recycling doesn't accept), nonrecyclabe Christmas and birthday cards, and various other bits that somehow got dirty or oily.

Broken sunglasses: Second Son got these from the doctor. They broke the next day.

Milk jugs: Normally we buy milk in returnable glass bottles, but Whole Foods was out of stock last week.


Brainstorming Solutions

• Diapers: Try cloth at night one more time. If that doesn't work, prepare to potty train.
• Toilet paper: Make handkerchiefs.
• Food scraps: Start another worm bin or try traditional composting.
• Random scraps of paper: Try harder not to get paper dirty, making it unrecyclable.
• Plastic packaging: Be more mindful of the packaging on products I buy.
• Cereal bags and boxes, tortilla bag, tortilla chip bags: Make food from scratch.
• Sugar bag, cocoa container: Check the bulk bins.
• Food cans: Can at home in glass jars.

Now I have a plan of action for reducing my trash.

How is your trash exploration going? Did you keep track of your trash for a week?

If you took pictures of your trash, you can add them to the Photos page over at the "Go Green without Going Broke" group on Facebook.

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