A Week with my Trash

Documenting and recording my trash over the past week has made me realize that I am also one of those people who doesn’t think they could possibly produce that much trash. Each time I had to take my phone out to take a picture of my trash, it made me more aware that I was throwing something out. If I didn’t have reusable things, such as reusable water bottles, I would have produced a lot more trash than I did. When I was looking back over the trash that I produced, it made me think about the trash I make at home. At school I have definitely reduced the amount of trash I make, but not on purpose, just because there isn’t as much available to me. If I made as much trash here as I did at home, I would probably be taking out my trash two to three times more than I already do. Thinking about it, there is so much unnecessary trash that we throw out. One of the things I was often throwing out was gum. Gum is something made by companies that has planned obsolescence. It is sold with a plastic wrapper to hold the multiple packages together, another plastic wrapper around the individual packages, a box it comes in, and finally the wrapping for each individual piece. All of that will eventually be thrown out and you waste five of the six materials that come with it. With gum there’s a continuous cycle of throwing out an old, flavorless piece and grabbing a new one. Companies count on people going through packs of gum quickly and therefore having to go buy more.

My trash from this past week has shown me that throughout the week my eating habits got progressively more and more unhealthy leading up to the weekend. I start the week off healthy and just go downhill from there. I also noticed that the amount of trash I make on the weekdays is a lot more than what I make on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On the weekends, soccer games, sorority events, or just things going on around campus take up a lot of my time so I don’t have as much time to eat. The healthier things usually make more trash because they don’t always fill me up as fast as the unhealthy things do. Since I was eating healthier during the week and not as well on the weekends, my trash patterns made more sense. Also, I don’t know if it was because I was paying attention to my trash or not, but I started trying to throw out less. If things were almost empty I wouldn’t always finish them because I didn’t want to make more trash. Keeping up with what I threw in the trash can, the recycling bin, and the compost bin made me so much more aware of throwing things in the right place. Usually I wouldn’t care as much as long as it was thrown out and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.

Seeing how much trash I still produced, even though I knew my production was being recorded, is a scary thing. If I weren’t keeping track of it I probably would have made even more. This relates to the real world because people don’t realize that they make as much trash as they do. This is because it’s not right in front of them or being recorded and relayed back to them. People waste things because they can and they’re addicted to trash. A lot of people think that their trash isn’t going to make much of a difference in the big picture with everyone else’s. Therefore, they waste as they please and don’t think about the plastic bags or the number of paper towels they are using. Also, people often don’t know what can and can’t be recycled and instead of looking it up, they just throw it in the trash because it’s easier that way. While recording my trash, I also noticed how many paper towels I use everyday. In the dorm bathrooms there aren’t recycling bins and it seems like such a waste to just throw out all those paper towels instead of trying to recycle them.

 

            I know that people are wasting things worse than I am because even though we’ve only been in this class for about a month, I have become much more aware of the things I throw out. I know my waste production has decreased because I have learned about the effects it has on the earth and we have seen it first hand at DADS and the recycling center. The landfill and the recycling center show that people aren’t paying attention to the amount of waste they produce. A lot of the things people throw away could be reused or used for a longer period of time. People tend to throw things out when they think that their things have gone out of style. This perceived obsolescence is something that companies aim for and is something that changes all the time. People think that they have to be up to date with all the latest things or else they could be deemed “old fashioned”. This thought process is what leads to people throwing out their perfectly good and reusable things. Especially with clothes, people go shopping all the time when they really don’t need that new shirt that has one little thing that’s different than the one they already have. When people shop, they get the plastic bag, the price tag and size tags, and the receipt which will all be thrown out as soon as they get home. This shows that shopping typically generates a lot of waste because companies make things with instant trash.

After reading Anthropologist’s Robin Nagel’s interview with “the believer” it made me think about all the trash we produce individually and as humans. Mostly everything we touch, use, and see will become trash at some point. Robin Nagel said, “Every single thing you see is future trash. Everything” (Nagel). That is a strange concept to think about. That means the desk and chair I am currently sitting at while I type this paper, will at some point become old and “out dated” and DU will change the furniture. That means that this desk and chair will one day end up in a landfill and will be replaced with something new. The same thing will one day happen to the new things and the cycle repeats, just adding to the amount of waste we produce. In the interview, Robin Nagel said, “Garbage is generally overlooked because we create so much of it so casually and so constantly that it’s a little bit like paying attention to, I don’t know, to your spit, or something else you just don’t think about. You—we—get to take it for granted that, yeah, we’re going to create it, and, yeah, somebody’s going to take care of it, take it away” (Nagel). We don’t notice how much trash we produce because we don’t have to deal with it in front of us. Having someone take it away can be both a positive and a negative. It’s a positive because then it’s no longer our problem but it’s a negative because then we constantly waste more because we have an empty trash can to put it in. Keeping a record of the trash I produce has made me realize that I make a lot more trips to the garbage can than I thought I did and I think this project will help me be more aware of it.

Trash Journal

           

Day:	What I threw out/recycled/composted:	Pictures:
September 24th	Luna bar wrapper (1) Gum wrappers (3) Gum (3) Paper plate (2)       recycled (1) Plastic cup (3)          recycled (1) Paper Napkins (3)       recycled (2) Plastic fork (1)        recycled (1) Kleenex (2) Goldfish bag (1) Paper towels (6)	Estimated Weight: 2 pounds	I didn’t realize how many paper towels I throw out and there aren’t any recycling bins in the bathrooms.
September 25th	Napkins (4)      recycled (3) Gum (2) Cardboard box (1)      recycled (1) Plastic cup (2)     recycled (2) Paper towel (4) Kleenex (1)	Estimated Weight: 1 lbs.	I started becoming more aware about what items threw out and what bins they were supposed to go in.
September  26th	Fruit snack     package (2) Gum (4) Straw paper     wrapper (2)     recycled (2) Plastic cup (3) Cardboard box (1)      recycled (1) Napkin (7)      recycled (3) Cardboard plate (1) Plastic fork (1) Paper towels (5)	Estimated Weight: 3 pounds	I throw out a lot more things than I thought I did.
September 27th	Napkin (2)     composted (2) Apple core (1) Gum (5) Plastic bag (1)      recycled (1) Gatorade bottle (1)      recycled (1) Gum package (1)      recycled Plastic pencil wrapper (1)      recycled Cardboard sheet (1)      recycled M&M bag (1) Gum packaging (1) Paper towels (5) Cardboard cup (1) Plastic fork (1)	Estimated Weight: 4.5 pounds	With some of the cardboard and plastic, I don’t always know where they can go. So they end up in the trash.
September 28th	Napkins (5)      composted Cardboard box (1)      composted Plastic water bottle (1)       recycled Plastic cup (1) Cardboard cup (1) Plastic fork (1) Plastic nature valley bar wrapper (1)	Estimated Weight: 2.5 pounds	I use more things than I actually need to. i.e. Napkins.
September 29th	Banana peel (1)      composted Apple core (1) Power bar      wrapper (1) Tin foil (1) Waxy paper (1) Napkins (2) Paper towels (5) Ice cream sandwich wrapper (1)	Estimated Weight: 2 pounds	My food choices are becoming more unhealthy as the weekend goes on and that is creating more trash.
September 30th	Napkins (2)      composted (1) Cupcake wrapper (1) Plastic ring (1) Fruit snack      wrapper (2) Banana peel (1)      composted Trail mix bag (1) Pop tart wrapper (1)	Estimated Weight: 1.5 pounds	I now make a conscious effort to throw things in their right bins and work to create less trash.