My Trash & I

         I live in a world ruled by plastic. To be more specific, I live in a world that is enveloped in a neatly sealed and labeled plastic wrapper that really doesn’t even need to be wrapped around my life in the first place. It wasn’t until a couple days ago that I realized this metaphorical plastic wrapper existed around my life because I was completely used to this amount of plastic in my everyday life. It just so happens that this plastic comes in the form of the trash that I dispose of each and every day. Without this project, I don’t think I would have ever made this astonishing and life-changing realization. After examining my trash journal and the total amount of plastic-based items that I was disposing of, I was able to come to a conclusion about my routine-esque lifestyle. I’ve also come to the conclusion that a wrapper is an item with planned obsolescence because it is good up until the item it’s protecting is put to use. But I think the last thing that I have come to a conclusion about is the most important; I don’t want to think of my life as something with planned obsolescence just because a plastic wrapper surrounds it.

            Through this project, I realized that I eat a lot of snacks. They are usually pretty healthy snacks and so I never really feel guilty about eating a lot of them or going through them quickly. But, when I began this project and began to analyze the trash made by these snacks rather than the nutritional quality of them, I started to feel incredibly guilty. All of my granola bars, nuts, apricots, berries and hummus come in some form of plastic packaging. The berry containers are able to be recycled but after visiting the recycling center and seeing what a process it is to dispose of it properly, I still felt guilty for creating the waste anyway. Plastic was the material most evident in my waste because it made up almost all of the items that were wrappers or holders of things.

            During the 7 days that I recorded my trash I happened to have a pretty bad cold. This definitely had an impact on what my trash looked like. Each day I threw out on average about 20 Kleenexes and every day I would also throw out the little plastic packaging that the Kleenexes came in. I was also taking medicine almost every morning and night and those usually came in cardboard or aluminum and plastic packaging. If I had not been sick, I think that my trash would have been slightly lighter than what it ended up being.

            75% of the items that I was consistently disposing of are all items with an extremely short planned obsolescence. The wrappers are used as protection and a good way to transport my snacks without them getting anywhere but in the end they do not provide any benefit to me like the food does to satisfy my hunger. The Kleenexes have an even shorter life because they get used for 30 seconds then are immediately disposed of because who re-uses a dirty Kleenex? The world as a whole goes through so many wrappers, napkins and Kleenexes and I was shocked by just my own amount. We all live lives that revolve around items of planned obsolescence because the human race is addicted to items that are guaranteed fresh and satisfactory to our happiness right then and there.

            Thomas Humes, the author of Garbology, states that, “It’s tough to overcome an addiction when you can’t even admit how big a problem you’ve got.” The addiction that he refers to here is exactly the addiction I realized existed in not only my own life but also the lives of the rest of the people in the world. It is because these products make a routine possible in life. To be able to have the satisfaction of an item and then dispose of it and not have to worry about it anymore is extremely convenient. My trash greatly revolves around my daily routine, which is always very busy. I don’t always have time to sit down and eat a full meal and that is why these wrapped up and portable snacks are really beneficial to me during my day. Some of my other trash items were to-go packages that are solely made of dense, hard plastic such as the take-home burrito container and the handful of utensils I threw out over the course of the week.

            I also realized that majority of these planned obsolescence pieces of trash all had to do with food. That is because most of my trash is food or has to do with food. I was a little bit surprised by this because before beginning this project, I would have guessed that majority of my trash would not have been food and other items instead such as school supplies and other random things. This project has revealed to me that I am a person of routine and I do like to have new things and I tend to buy them a lot. I am concerned with having an item that is guaranteed to be fresh and completely sanitary, which is something that all pre-packaged items can guarantee. I also realized that I don’t ever make things from scratch. I am 100% a consumer because I don’t ever buy materials to make things or food. To relate this back to Humes’ point, I have an addiction to buying new things that can be disposed of relatively quickly and easily.

            Though plastic dominated most of my trash creation, there were a variety of other items as well. My mom sent me a package and in it contained a giant piece of (hot-pink) bubble wrap. Thankfully there were no peanuts in the packing but the box, bubble wrap, and the wax paper in which the cookies were wrapped in all ended up in both the recycling and garbage can the next day. This lead me to realize that human kind has the mentality that when an object is being transported, whether its across the country or the next room over, we always have to have the object in some form of a disposable holder or container. Objects are rarely given and received by themselves, especially food. I started to think about a grocery store, which essentially is 50% food and 50% waste because all of the packaging the food comes in will end up in the garbage or recycling after a pretty short amount of time. I finished a bag of carrots on my last day of documentation that had two layers of unnecessary plastic packaging, why, I do not know. I found this to be the most shocking amount of plastic for packaging so I included the picture as proof of this ridiculous situation.

            I do not want to create as much trash as I do. I was greatly inspired by “The Clean Bin Project” and the data I collected from this project that I have come up with an idea to combine the two. Wrappers and packaging are everywhere and there are so many situations where they are not necessarily needed, so my goal is to start reusing packaging or finding alternatives to disposable packing. I know my lifestyle and daily routine are made easier thanks to packaging but I am determined to find a way to create a minimal amount of waste instead of the maximum. I do not want to be defined by my trash; I want to be defined by the environmental resources I could be saving around me instead.

Day	What I threw away/recycled…	Estimated weight & Photo!	Thoughts?
MONDAY 9.24.12 (day one)	-35 Kleenex -7 Paper Towels -Plastic Gum packaging -Pear core -5 Napkins -6 pieces of gum (+their wrappers) -Granola bar wrapper -Plastic plate -plastic set of utensils	3 lbs.	I thought that I would be able to recycle the plastic gum packaging, but I did research and apparently it is not recyclable, like many other plastics!
TUESDAY 9.25.12 (day two)	-27 Kleenex -Cardboard cereal box -Blueberry plastic container -Soda can -granola bar wrapper -5 pieces of gum (+their wrappers) -Cardboard sticky note holder +metal spring -DayQuil plastic packaging -apple core	4.5 lbs	I made the realization that I go through gum quite rapidly, and I thought of the giant hunk of soda cans at the recycling center when I recycled mine!
WEDNESDAY 9.26.12 (day three)	-Kleenex box -16 Kleenex -Aluminum probiotic holder - 5 plastic tag attachment from shirt -apple core x2 -4 pieces of gum + wrappers -granola bar wrapper -plastic snack wrapper	3.5 lbs.	I felt guilty about the tags and the little plastic things that come on clothing because I don’t think they can be recycled and I thought about little animals eating them in the landfill…
THURSDAY 9.27.12 (day four)	-5 paper flyers -17 Kleenex -Old chap-stick -duct tape -2 plastic bags -gum packaging (new pack!) -apple core -plastic snack wrap -giant piece of bubble wrap -newspaper -cardboard box -granola bar wrapper -5 pieces of gum +wrappers	5 lbs.	I was so excited to receive a package from my mom and little sister but I think this whole trash documentation is getting to me because I immediately felt guilty once I opened it to see a giant strand of hot pink bubble wrap. The cookies were delicious though and I didn’t worry about having to waste those!
FRIDAY 9.28.12 (day five)	-15 Kleenex -gum packaging plastic -razor -chap-stick sticker wrapper -plastic “Fuse” bottle -apple core -4 pieces of gum + wrappers -5 napkins -Naked bottle	Estimated weight: 3 lbs.	Today I am feeling guilty about how much gum I chew for just a little bit each day and then throw away because I then go to eat something. I realized this because of having to document the amount that I throw away.
SATURDAY 9.29.12 (day 6)	-Carton of milk -17 Kleenex -Wax paper -Flyer -Plastic packaging from paper clip thing -cardboard box/ wax packaging -plastic take-home burrito container -plastic fork --7 strawberry tops	Estimated weight: 4 lbs.	Thinking about how it only took me three days to go through one carton of milk. That is a planned obsolescence of 3 days… I feel like that is long compared to some of the other object that have planned obsolescence closer to 30 seconds, like a gum wrapper!
SUNDAY 9.30.12 (day 7)	-19 Kleenex -Pear core -granola bar wrapper -apple core -8 peanut shells -paper plate -plastic carrot bag	Estimated weight: 3 lbs	I ate like half a bag of carrots and when I went to throw the package away, I saw that there were 2 layers of plastic packaging for the carrots. Ridiculous.