Initially it started with the realization that my wife (and I) are throwing about 50lbs on average per week to the landfill. It seemed a lot to me back then because it was all mostly packaging for the stuff that was bought at retail. My initial cry was to quit buying stuff! I started to recycle the aluminum and scrap the steal, reuse what I could, etc. but it's not enough. We still produce about 30-45lbs of landfill per week. Just in our little suburban town of West Chicago, 25,000 people probably produce about 1.25 million pounds of landfill waste per week.
While watching TV, I saw a Toyota commercial that bragged about being a zero landfill facility. It took me a while to wrap my brain around that concept. It dawned on me that it was simply a recycling effort. I thought it was an admirable effort at being greener. So much so, that it should be an example to everyone that if an entire automobile factory can eliminate landfill waste, surely our puny little house can do the same.
The party is over and the garage is filled with tall kitchen garbage bags and cardboard boxes. I decide this is as good a time as any to go zero landfill. It started with me throwing the cardboard boxes, onto the last night's bon fire, where it promptly "went away". The next step is to get the official recycling boxes out of the basement and back into the garage. We do not have recycling pickup at our house or work, but Benny does and he's just across town. So I start pulling cans, bottles and cups out from the paper plates and food scraps. I didn't care, I had gloves on.
I went to work with five half full tall kitchen bags of garbage that I threw in the dumpster before I walked into the door. It was last night I realized that this wasn't going to be easy. It started with the food scraps, that make all the other garbage gross. I knew then that if I couldn't have my family proceed as normal and I just do my magic in the garage, it would be a battle. I have to convince my wife and kids to put different food scraps into different things, while all packaging, even film and foils, go in recycles.
My first taste of what to do came from:
http://blog.trashbackwards.com/2012/05/24/zero-waste-household-guide-12-first-steps/
The article is full of advise that will be impossible to get my wife and kids to go along with. The problem isn't that they don't care at heart. It's just that it means extra work for them and they can't figure out why dad's giant effort and battle will not even equal a drop in the bucket. They are right in a sense about the drop in the bucket, but I look at it as; I do not want to be at all responsible for the issues surrounding landfills.
It's not even just about the landfills, it's about the waste. There is an old Chinese phrase that approximates "every grain of rice has the farmers sweat". The same can be said for most everything including a pound of glass, aluminum, high density polyethylene, etc. At some point there is some digging or drilling, transporting, refining, manufacturing, distributing, retail and finally our house. It seems disrespectful to just chuck a pound of perfectly good high density polyethylene into the landfill simply because you are done using the stuff inside. It seems more natural to give it back to the people who make it, so they can reuse it.
Giving it back to the people who can reuse it seems like a real pain in the ass. Used to be, if I can cram it in a dumpster, it was good. If it didn't, I had to figure out what saw or hammer to use to get it to fit. Now everything has to get sorted and given to the right guys. Most of the stuff will be easy, put it in blue bin, take it over to Benny's house. There will be stuff that's gonna take googleing, like paper plates with food scraps and paper towels and stuff.
It's having to do the gross stuff, like cleaning two day old, aus jus that is now old gelatin that smells like garlic and is gross as hell. I got through it and cleaned it out though, so it should be such a deal to rinse stuff right then, when is wet and put the packaging in the recycles. Yea right, this is gonna be a battle. I can't get my kids to get a machine running, let alone clean old gross packaging so they can not throw it in landfill. They don't care, if it involves extra work, then screw it.
I gotta figure this out.
