A month ago now (no time like the present, especially with nowhere to go) I decided to start a trash book to track our kitchen waste, which is where most of our household trash comes from. Why? Well, ever since I saw the ridiculously small trash containers that zero waste people boast of, I was struck with a few questions. For one thing, how did they even manage it? We figured it helped that most of those people were able to shop at bulk stores, where they wouldn’t have to deal with as much mandatory food packaging as in a regular grocery store. And indeed, we did find it to be the case that a significant amount of our kitchen waste was in food packaging.
But I was convinced that there still might be something interesting to learn from trying an experiment of our own, to really figure out how much we were wasting, and what that was. Perhaps we were throwing away small things we didn’t need to; or perhaps there was some things we could avoid throwing out by just not getting it in the first place.
So I made two books: one for the large trash can, one for the smaller one that we use more often (and then put in the large trash can when it’s full). I figured we would be able to tell, if we wrote down everything we threw away for a month, what it was that was actually taking up all that space.
The answer was a simple one: tissues. 300 of them, to be exact. (For the small trash count. Adding tissues from the large trash count give you 5 more). Yikes! This seems like the place that most needs some change. (Sidenote — many of those tissues were technically only half a tissue, but when we threw them away we counted each as 1 tissue. So the true count could be closer to 150 tissues — which is still a lot.)
Other than that, it was food packaging, as we suspected — for rice, wheat, butter, tea (we threw out 22 teabag packages over the month, which shows you that we drink a lot of tea — not even counting loose tea — especially when we are fighting illness, which we were through March and April)! Yeah, there were some things we could’ve avoided throwing out, but much of it was plastic bags, containers, and seals that food came in. Unless we stay away from food that comes in even a bit of trashy packaging, we can’t get around it. And that’s pretty hard to avoid, though buying in bulk helps, as does bringing our own bags to the grocery store.
All in all, we threw away about one and a half full kitchen-sized trash bags worth of waste for the month. And, while that’s nothing to, um, sneeze at, it means that our yearly kitchen trash output is somewhere around 18 trash bags.
How about you? If you’re curious, give this experiment a try. 🙂
Kitchen Trash (March 18 — April 18)
| LARGE TRASH | SMALL TRASH |
|---|---|
| Tiny bit of paper with tape on it | Tissues x 300 |
| Tissue from painting | food bits/crumbs/egg bits/potato eyes/garlic peel |
| Two pieces scrap tape | Elderberry package + dosage cap |
| Tiny cardboard bits | Cap inside |
| Hair from brush x 3 | Raisin package x 2 |
| Tissue box x 2 | Metal cover |
| 2 paper towels | Yeast package x 6 |
| Pasta container | Plastic pasta package |
| Plastic rice package | 1 buckwheat bag |
| Paper + scotch tape Batman mask | Onion bag |
| Tissues x 4 | Marker |
| Butter cardboard package | Teabag packages x 22 |
| Pen package | Tea box x 2 |
| Envelope plastics | Plastic seal |
| Bills | Cheese wrapper |
| Amazon paper tape | Bit from cleaning brush |
| Wrapper | Plastic cap and wrapper |
| Crumbs | Plastic outside from yogurt |
| Glossy paper mailers, 3 | Iron package x 2 |
| Plastic from crackers | |
| Plastic guard from new bottle | |
| Label, paper | |
| Burned bits | |
| Jar cap | |
| Card | |
| Receipt | |
| Plastic container bag | |
| Plastic sugar bag | |
| Gum | |
| Plastic wrappers x 3 | |
| Plastic top | |
| Loose Threads | |
| Leftover spaghetti | |
| Cardboard package | |
| Teabag w plastic | |
| Packaging and old vitamins | |
| Plastic dosing cup | |
| Plastic bags x 2 | |
| Biodegradable fork and spoon and knife | |
| Envelope plastics x 8 | |
| Bank check stubs | |
| Empty stamp book | |
| Top under seal | |
| Cranberry packages x 3 | |
| Plastic vitamin seal + paper vitamin box | |
| Sponge and package | |
| Oil seal top | |
| Plastic seal x 6 | |
| Ink top seal | |
| Butter package | |
| Tofu package | |
| Bank statement | |
| Net pack plastic outside thing | |
| Foil yogurt cover | |
| Cracker box and cracker plastic sleeve x 2 | |
| Plastic strip | |
| Salt package | |
| Chip bag | |
| Carrot ties | |
| Teabag rag | |
| Styrofoam lid seal | |
| Plastic wrapper around peanut butter top | |
| Plastic fork | |
| Tea bags x 4 | |
| Green tea bag x 2 | |
| Carrot tag twisty tie | |
| Packaging | |
| 2 plastic packages: camut and barley | |
| Hazelnut milk carton | |
| Plastic top, match stick, tag | |
| 3 sliced cheese in betweens | |
| Plastic wheat package | |
| Envelope scrap | |
| Plastic cheese package x 2 | |
| Wax seed package | |
| Dried fruit plastic package | |
| Sour cream plastic container | |
| Mesh garlic bag | |
| Cheetos bag | |
| Bills | |
| Price tag | |
| Ant bait package | |
| Nut package |
