Reduce Seasonal Garbage Guilt By Reducing Garbage

Easy Steps for Cutting Your Waste Load

November 21, 2007 at 1:56AM by Deirdre Dolan | comment

For some reason Thanksgiving begins the season of excess. We loosen our belts and ride the frenzy of buying and eating until we wake up around New Years fat and broke. Every year I vow to be more efficient and thoughtful in my gift giving – the number of catalogs that arrive through my door clearly make the same vow – but I know that most of the gifts I give will be returned and that I will stand on long lines returning mine. The reality is that the holidays make me think about waste. And garbage. And every year I feel a little guiltier as I become more aware of what a huge drag on the environment trash really is.

According to hotfact.com, Americans throw away up to 25% more garbage (five million tons more than the daily 3.5 pounds of garbage we usually throw away) between Thanksgiving and the New Year. About four million of those tons are made up of wrapping paper and shopping bags. The website IdealBite.com recently included a list of websites that sell cool, reusable bags you can buy that will save some of the 12 million barrels of oil and 14 million trees that go into making plastic and paper bags every year:

What else can we do?

Junk Mail

Forty-four percent of junk mail is thrown away without being opened, so take matters into your own hands this year and call up and remove yourself from their lists at www.the-dma.org.

Paper Products:

A few years ago we stopped using paper products (except toilet paper) in the house, and it’s been pretty satisfying and easy. But the number of baby wipes we’ve used in the year since our baby was born is pathetic. One of my favorite websites is No More Garbage by a couple in Toronto who have been trying to live without any garbage on and off for the last few years. I’m having another baby in two weeks so the baby wipe trash is going to double. Sarah and Kyle had a baby a few weeks ago, and say they have managed to not create any more garbage since her birth. They use cloth diapers and are planning on practicing Elimination Communication, and instead of disposable baby wipes they use Hankettes Organic Cotton Baby Wipes from www.grassrootsstore.com. This is very impressive to me, and if our next apartment has a washing machine I would like to follow their lead. Until then we’ll deal with the guilt.

Garbage Fashion

Even more extreme, check out Haute Trash, a group of artists who produce runway fashion shows featuring haute couture made from garbage. Here are some more practical garbage reduction tips, from hotfact.com:

Use ceramic mugs or cups and instead of plastic or Styrofoam cups.
Think about packaging – do you really need to put your fruit and vegetables in plastic bags? Recycle supermarket bags and take your own when you go shopping.
Take used motor oil to special Hazardous Waste facilities.
Cut down on wrapping paper by reusing gift bags or buying recycled gift wrap. Reuse cardboard boxes.
Recycle aluminium cans – we’re doing well on this, as it’s one of America’s most recycled products.
Save on paper. Print on the back of printer paper, cut up used envelopes to make scrap paper and buy recycled paper. Each ton of recycled paper can save 17 trees, three cubic yards of landfill space and 4,000 kilowatts of energy.
Think before you chuck your old mobile phone away.
Mobiles contain substances that can be very dangerous, so look out for mobile collection schemes instead.

If you have any other great ideas for dealing with garbage, please send them in!

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