A Year’s Worth of Trash
January 10, 2008
Posted by CindyC in : Communities , trackback
I was watching the news the other day saw an interesting story about one man’s project to keep his trash – for one year! Ari Derfel, a 35 year old man from Berkeley, started this experiment to see how much trash one person generates in a year. With no outside storage space, the trash was kept inside his apartment, made possible by composting all food scraps and diligently washing all non-perishable packaging, paper, plastic containers. At the end of 2007, his personal trash tallied to a grand total of 96 cubic feet and filled most of his living space.
Source: Save Your Trash
Not only did this experiment generate some striking visuals, it also garnered discussions and national media attention on the issue of waste. Derfel’s story has been picked up by ABC, CNN and MSNBC, not to mention the slew of interesting questions and comments posted on his blog. Although commonly cited, 250 million tons of solid waste (annually generated by Americans) feels abstract to me. However, seeing someone’s trash laid out in a personal living space is more relatable. What I found interesting about Derfel’s project is how personalizing his trash prompted changes and learnings in his life and lives of others. By stumbling over processed food boxes every day, Derfel became more conscious of his diet. By asking stores to minimize packaging while doing his shopping, he raises the consciousness of others. Most important, taking his learnings from 2007, Derfel plans on continuing his project in 2008 with the goal of reducing his trash. Now that’s a great new year resolution.
CindyC at Organicpicks
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Comments»
I live in the Alderney in the Channel Islands whee we have a waste problem as we have to ship it out to a landfill site, so we recycle as much as we can locally. I am particularly interested in this article as I have an organic website in the UK.http://www.organicassistant.com/ Have a look at where I live http://www.alderney.gov.gg/index.php/pid/1
Sorry, I forgot to add that I have included this article in our News section.
http://www.organicassistant.com/
This weekend many news outfits (including, CNN, BBC, AP, etc.) reported on the trash crisis in Naples, Italy that prompted the prime minister to hold emergency meetings on Monday. Apparently more than two weeks of uncollected garbage has led to mountains of trash across the city. Basically they ran out of local trash dumps. Is this indicative of our future? I can’t help but wonder about our garbage prospect… Just google “trash crisis naples”, you can see all the stinky details
Right now I live in the South Side of Chicago where there is no concerted community effort to recycle. It’s shameful. I don’t have a car, so I cannot even take my recycled goods somewhere. I wish there was a recycle pick up program for those who do not have transportation. So in the end I throw everything in the trash with an extremely guilty conscience. Which in the end is really not good enough. Thank you for this, I am really going to make an effort to find a better way.
Laviyah, a couple of my friends just moved from Houston to the bay area. They are quite impressed with the normal-ness, the regular-ness of the recycling effort here. It’s just a part of the life for most people. But surely it wasn’t so at the beginning. It took quite a lot of patience for the state to get to where it is today. Hopefully there will be curb-side recycling soon in your neighborhood. It seems to be the only effectively way for most people to recycle.