WELCOME TO A YEAR WITHOUT GARBAGE
You can now follow us on Twitter or become a fan of the Green Garbage Project on Facebook.
Welcome to the official Web site of the 2009-2010 Green Garbage Project. This site will chronicle a year in which a (fairly) typical American married couple endeavors to live for a year without throwing away … well, anything. Impossible, you say? We don’t think so, but we aim to find out.
For one year, from July 6, 2009 to July 6, 2010, we aim to live without producing garbage that winds up in a landfill. You can find all the details about our challenge on this site, so check back often to see how we’re doing.
SITE GUIDE
Specifically, you can use the various pages of this Web site to find this information:
- HOME: The what, who, where, when, how, and why of the project. Scroll down to find out all the nitty-gritty details about the Green Garbage Project.
- BLOG: Updated weekly with insights about the project. Check for new blog entries each Monday morning.
- GARBAGE TRICKS AND TIPS: We expect to learn a lot over the course of the year about waste disposal, recycling, composting, and reducing consumption. Any time we learn new information, it will be listed under this tab, to help others who are interested in reducing the amount of trash they produce. Also, we welcome your tips and tricks, so if we can’t figure out a way to recycle or reuse, say, our toothpaste tube, and you know of somewhere that will recycle these, let us know!
- LINKS: The Internet is a gold mine of information, and as we find Web sites with information relating to our project goals (recycling, reducing consumption/trash, etc.) we will post them here. If you know of a site not posted, e-mail us.
- NEWS: Any time the Green Garbage Projects hits the news or has other newsworthy announcements to make, look for updates and press releases here.
- CONTACT: Feel free to leave your comments on the blog page (these will be moderated for appropriateness) or e-mail us at amy@greengarbageproject.com
CHALLENGE DETAILS
WHAT is the Green Garbage Project?
The Green Garbage Project is pretty simple, really. It’s a little like a science experiment, where we start out with a question: Is it possible to live for one year without producing trash that winds up in a landfill? With a few minor exceptions (see Ground Rules, below), we think this is possible, even living in the country that produces more trash each year than any other country in the world. So, we set out to answer the question by putting our own lifestyle to the test. For one year, we will produce as little trash as humanly possible – ultimately, we hope to produce one plastic grocery sack (or less) of garbage bound for the landfill.
WHO are we?
We are Amy and Adam, and we live in the small community of Dallas, Oregon with our dog Kavik and cats Lexy and Neptune. Amy graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle with a BA in English and Anthropology and holds a master’s degree in teaching from Western Oregon University. She teaches English at Willamina High School during most of the year and spends her summers trying to be a freelance writer. Adam graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle with a degree in commercial photography and works as photo editor and art director for Dallas’s newspaper, the Polk County Itemizer Observer. We have been married three years on July 1, 2009 and have no children. We are launching this project in the summer to utilize Amy’s time off from work, but for most of the year, we both work full-time jobs and lead pretty typical American lifestyles, albeit with the extra effort of trying to be “green” wherever possible. Also, Amy has been a vegetarian for 12 years, which does impact the consumer choices we make.
WHERE does the project take place?
The town of Dallas, Oregon is located 20 minutes away from Salem, Oregon’s capitol. We’re an hour south of Portland, and one hour away from the gorgeous Oregon Coast, where we spend many weekends visiting.
WHEN does the project take place?
July 6, 2009 – July 6, 2010.
HOW will we do this?
I’m not going to pretend it’s going to be easy, especially when it comes to our young nephews visiting us this summer, Christmas, eating out, grocery shopping, our trip to Ashland and Crater Lake, etc. In fact, this project will touch every part of our lives. It will mean planning ahead, researching recycling facilities and packaging products, and lots of extra time and effort, but we believe that, in the end, it will be worth it. Specific steps that we are taking include:
- Not buying stuff that isn’t recyclable
- Starting a compost bin in our backyard
- Growing some of our own produce in our backyard garden
- Making products like soap, cheese, butter, granola, and bread
- Taking our business to butchers, dairies, farmer’s markets, and natural food stores
- Saving any recyclable materials our curbside collection won’t take and bringing them to a recycling depot
- Branching out in our consumer choices by trying waste-free products we’ve never used before
- Using reusable bags when shopping and bringing reusable containers to restaurants for leftovers
- Replacing all our light bulbs with energy-efficient versions, and replacing all our disposable batteries with recyclable ones
- Donating to and buying from secondhand stores
- Researching how things are made and what is/isn’t recyclable
- Legally burning clean, dry, untreated organic material
We are NOT cancelling our regular trash pickup, burning illegally or uncleanly, composting meat/feces, or storing anything unsanitary. Any trash we do happen to create will be cleaned or disposed of in a safe, legal fashion. See Ground Rules, below.
WHY are we doing this?
The statistics speak for themselves – the average U.S. citizen produces 4.5 pounds of garbage a day, more than anywhere else in the world. 16,000 plastic bags are used each second in the United States. Americans recycle only about 32% of our total waste. And the big one – 99% of everything that we buy ends up trashed within six months. Does this make sense to anybody?
We believe that, somewhere, society took a wrong turn, environmentally-speaking. We use up our natural resources faster than the earth can replenish them, and we’ve become a throwaway society. This feels unnatural, wasteful, and dirty.
We also believe that, intrinsically, the earth is worth saving – for future generations and for the sake of preserving the natural beauty of the outdoors, which we have all had occasion to marvel at before. So, we became members of what is now called the Green Movement. We became environmentally conscious, making an effort, at least, to buy local, organic, cruelty-free, and fair-trade products, to buy biodegradable cleaning products, to recycle, and to use green bags for carrying purchases whenever possible. But no matter what we did, it never felt like we were making an appreciable difference. The trash still piled up, landing in a dump somewhere to stagnate for years to come.
In spite of the efforts we made, it never felt like we were making less of an impact on the planet. Available information about the environmental movement is confusing, to say the least, and often contradictory. By buying corn-based products, are we really contributing to the destruction of the rainforest as land is mowed down to make room for corn fields? If I accidentally throw a piece of waxed paper into the recycling bin, does it really ruin the whole batch of recycling? These questions plagued us, with the end result being doing the best we could and often ignoring the rest. At the end of the day, no matter how “green” we were being, we still used Styrofoam takeout containers and throwaway coffee cups. Each week, we hauled a bin full of trash to the curb.
Finally, we decided that enough is enough. The Green Garbage Project is our way to make a difference. We also hope it can help us answer some of those nagging, trash-related environmental questions. Will it solve all the world’s problems? No, of course not – but this way we can see a difference in our personal environmental impact. This is our own personal way to tread lightly. If each American produces 4.5 pounds of garbage a day, that’s more than 1,600 pounds of garbage per person a year, and 3,200 pounds of garbage between us. If we can reduce that number to 800 pounds, 400 pounds, or hopefully even 4.5 pounds in a year’s time, then we’ve made an appreciable difference – and maybe inspired other people to do the same.
THE GROUND RULES
1. Medical products and limited hygiene products – We will count medical and hygiene waste in our final garbage totals at the end of the year, but we will still be using prescription products, oral contraceptives, over-the-counter medicines, and contact lenses. We will recycle where possible and choose products with environmentally friendly packaging.
2. We understand that we can’t control what people give us – So while we ask our friends and family to please try to honor our challenge whenever possible, we will graciously accept gifts as given and try to dispose of packaging as responsibly as possible.
3. Meat waste, animal waste, hair, vacuum cleaner waste:
- Leftover meat: We eat so little meat and give leftovers to Kavik (dog) that we don’t anticipate having any to throw away. If we end up with leftover meat/bones, they will go into the bin for curbside pickup each week. We will weigh organic waste each week to keep track.
- Cat poop and biodegradable litter: Cat poop is going straight into the trash because, after much research, this seems to be the safest route. From an article on the subject from Grist.com, “Cats can carry the disease toxoplasmosis and pass it on to us via oocysts (a dormant stage of the disease) in their feces. This disease can be fatal to infants and immune-system-deficient adults, and make the rest of us sick. Do not handle cat poop if you are pregnant, and don’t let small children do it either. Wash your hands thoroughly after handling cat poop, no matter who you are.” It is recommended that cat feces are not flushed, buried, or composted due to the danger of toxoplasmosis. We want to be safe, so kitty litter gets trashed.
- Dog poop: No worries here – this will be buried.
- Vacuum cleaner dust: Returned to nature.
- Hair: Returned to nature.
4. Accidents do occasionally happen – And while we hope they don’t, we may not be able to control disposal of car parts/fluids, appliances, or other hazardous materials. We will dispose of these items as responsibly as possible if the need arises.
5. Some leeway is necessary when considering work-related trash – While we will make every effort to eliminate all trash we create in the workplace, we understand that some may be generated in spite of our best efforts. A teacher can hardly avoid dry erase markers and pens, for example.
6. All garbage counts as part of the challenge. It will all be saved (with the sole exceptions of cat litter, meat/bones, and hazardous car/household waste if this arises), weighed, and cleaned, so that at the end of the year, we know how much trash we produced for the landfill. We will use every means available to us to compost, reduce, reuse, recycle, upcycle, or donate any trash we generate, for one year. Off we go!
JOIN US!
We invite anyone interested to participate in their own version of the Green Garbage Project. Challenge yourself to produce no trash for a year, a month, a week, or even a day. Or, simply try to produce less trash in general. Whatever you do, if you’re interested in embarking on a similar challenge, make sure you consider these items, which we have learned along the way:
- Burning in your community: Before you burn any trash, contact your local fire department to inquire about backyard burning regulations. Only burn clean, dry, organic material during times when it is legal to do so. Burning non-organic trash (things like plastic) is worse for the environment than sending it to a landfill.
- Contact your local garbage service before cancelling your trash: We have learned that many cities have municipal codes requiring residential trash pick-up. For details, click here to read about a man sued by his city for cancelling his trash pickup. Read about the lawsuit’s resolution here. We have chosen to continue our regular trash service.
- Research composting: Composting is the ultimate closed-loop environmental system, but it does take a bit of know-how.
- Carefully consider sanitary disposal or meat, bones, and feces: There is much debate over whether these items can be composted and how to do this safely. If you don’t know what you’re doing, research it first.
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