How much trash does your house produce even with recyling?

[Gary Allan]

Rant!!

I don't know how this is possible ..but my house seems to ooze trash. I'm trying to index where a tyical household of 3-4 people sits in comparison to us. We fill a standard kitchen trash can daily. The bag is then pulled (we have a source for cheap 55 gallon size bags) and any additional trash is then placed in it (morning trash). I do the yard waste on its way out to the trash can. We fill two trash cans twice a week ..and one can of recycles during the same time frame.

side note observation: When my wife went on a trip with work (residential treatment/human services) the trash can only needed to be emptied once in 4 days. This was probably due to the lack of meals being prepared for two people where my daughter and I relied on sandwiches and such to suit our tastes individually.

When I visited my former co-worker. His wife didn't work and she would cook and stay busy ..and I'd look in their trash can ..and see one item ..maybe two. We have a garbage disposal ..they didn't ..etc..etc..

Are we just programmed to open packaging for no good reason??

 

[moribundman]

Look at the packaging of many products. Take cookies: Foil wrapper, carboard box, plastic insert cookies (sometimes individually wrapped!). Selling a lot of packaging with little content is "good marketing." Some products have to be packaged in small portions or quantities for good reasons, but nobody has to buy 50 cans of soda for his family. Buy a few large bottles instead...

We (two people) produce about 3 supermarket paper bags trash per week. That does not include recycables like plastic, cardboard, paper, metal, and glass, all of which we have to sort out.

 

[Pablo]

I know what you are saying. Thank goodness for the TC. I use that thing to the max. We are "allowed" one blue roller can per week. Since the trash mafia pro-rates it down - we only do that now - every other week a VERY full can.

Recycling helps. Every scrap of paper. Every can, glass and plastic......cardboard and motor earl.

I have a NICE compost pile, too.

 

[opus1]

Well, I'm a household of one so I know this is going to skew the results.

As for recyclables, depending on the week, my bin is 1/2 to 3/4 full when it goes out, and I usually have at least 2 grocery bags of paper to go with it. Mostly newspaper, but cardboard from pop cases, cereal boxes and the like also goes in there.

As for real garbage, I put out one, 32-gallon bag maybe every 6 weeks or so. I don't generate that much trash. At $2.17 per sticker

, I make that bag go a long way.

I mulch the grass so I'll bag the yard waste maybe twice a year, either when I go away for an extended time and the grass is too long for the machine to handle, or in the fall for a little clean-up. That usually generates 6 yard-waste bags. We don't get a break on yard-waste, so each bag is $2.17 just like it was regular garbage. So now you know why I try so hard to mulch.

 

[andrews]

I know what you mean! No matter how hard I try we still always have tons of garbage built up every week. I gave up the recycling bins and having a garbage pickup. It just got to be too expensive and a real pain to sort through everything. For fifteen bucks I can load everything (non toxic, of course) into my pickup and dump it at the solid waste center. Much easier and I don't have to freak out every time we purchase something that comes in a box bigger than cereal would come in. No more storing three ugly garbage cans and several sorting bins in my small garage either. I just bag everything up in black yard bags, airtight, and I stack them in a closet/tool room, in the garage. No smell and they stack easily. When it's full (about once a month) I just throw them right into my truck and off I go.

 

[andrews]

Opus,
Two dollars to dump one bag of trash!!??

Wow, the windy city is expensive!

 

[pbm]

Awhile back I read that America has approx. 6%
of the worlds population yet we create approx. 50% of the world's trash. It's a dubious distinction that we should try to do something about. Remember when McD's put every burger in a styrofoam package. Well enough people complained and they started just wrapping them in foil.
PS. On a similar note we have over 50% of the worlds lawyers.

 

[moribundman]

quote:

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I have a NICE compost pile, too.

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Please don't remind me of the bio-garbage can we had back in the '80s. Can you say worms and maggots?

 

[michaelc80]

Hmmm...our 2 adult household has 3-4 30 gallon bags per week. However I do burn a lot of trash (it's still legal here and I'm in the country). Any cardboard, some paper, etc all get burned. Yard waste, old lumber, all gets hauled out to the burn pile. We have no recycling available.

Garbage pickup costs about 10 bucks a month.

Used engine oil gets burned as well.

 

[opus1]

quote:

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Originally posted by andrews:
Opus,
Two dollars to dump one bag of trash!!??

Wow, the windy city is expensive!

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And the bad part is that I'm not actually in Chicago.

The last city I lived in included trash pickup in your property taxes and you only had to buy stickers for yard waste. At least they were reasonable, something like 75-cents each.

Where I am now, it's the same sticker for both, even though they use different trucks to pick up trash and yard waste.

There is also an option to rent a can on wheels for $15/month, but based on the litte amount of trash I throw out, I'm better off with the stickers.

 

[Bret Chase]

When I used to live one town over they had a pay as you go trash system. I think it was $1.75 a bag. all it did was make me throw the bags in the back of my truck and toss them in the dumpster at work.

-Bret

 

[andrews]

quote:

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I think it was $1.75 a bag. all it did was make me throw the bags in the back of my truck and toss them in the dumpster at work.

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Bret, even though I don't agree with it, I can certainly see why you do it. In the area where I live, if you get up early in the morning and venture out to the local apartment complexes, you can see people pull up to the dumpsters and dump their household trash in them. With the high price of garbage pickup, I can see why they do it. I just find it hard to believe that the local counties and the sanitation folks have to charge so much for this service. If you add up what people pay to get rid of their garbage every month I'll bet it's astounding. What do the garbage collection people make an hour....$45.00 or something?? Same goes for the county workers at the dump. I wonder if they drive BMW's?

 

[labman]

My wife and I recycle newspaper, cans, bottles, 1 and 2 plastic, and motor oil. The rest usually fits in one 30 gallon trash bag, I think about $10 a month. Hummmmmmm, not much less than Chicago.

Big problem with charging by the bag, is cheapskates that illegally dump it.

I think well regulated waste to energy conversion would be better for the environment than recycling. Recycling takes too much diesel.

 

[moribundman]

Truly bio-degradable plastic will be increasingly used.

 

[Cycle Freak]

I am a single person in my 2 bedroom house no basement with 1.5 car garage. I generate on average 2 13 gallon kitchen size bags a week. I return my oil to Autozone or Murrays as they take it for free. My trash serviece is paid for by my taxes, I don't know what I would do if I had to pay extra, probably I would take all the burnable stuff up north to my parents place in the country and burn it like they do.

 

[Jimbo]

Weekly trash pickup at all residential addresses is paid for through the property tax bill, so no one can "opt out". I used to own a house in another town where it was on the water bill. One 64 gallon bin each for trash, recylcables and green waste is provided per unit. In a typical week we (two adults) fill both the trash and recylcing bin about half full. Newspapers and junk mail are the main bulk of the recyleables. Yard projects fill the green waste one pretty quickly, so they do provide additional ones at no charge. I dont have the space for nor interest in composting.

 

[SteelheadGuide]

We have 2 adults and a 3yr old in our house. We fill a 64gal trash can about 3/4 full ea. week. We also cram a 96gal recycle bin full every two weeks. We can recycle almost anything that isn't toxic,covered in food,or dangerous to the workers (used needles,flourescent tubes,ect.)
The yard waste is another 96gal can and in the Spring and Summer its full every week.

We pay about $75 for two months of these services.

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by moribundman:
Truly bio-degradable plastic will be increasingly used.

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I believe GM is already using biodegradable plastic in their engine compartments

At least my 95 and 96 GM products have it in selected areas like wire and hose clips.

 

[XS650]

2 Adults. When were were living in San Jose with an outstanding recycling program and a trash compacter, we rarely filled one 32 gallon trash container over 1/2 full in a week.

Now that we are in an area NE of Sacramento where their idea of recycling is to put recycleables in thin blue plastic bags and drop them in with the other garbage, we nearly fill a 96 gallon container every week.

 

[brianl703]

quote:

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Originally posted by XS650:

At least my 95 and 96 GM products have it in selected areas like wire and hose clips.

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As with most things environmentally-friendly, the Europeans pioneered this.

Mid-80s Volvos and Jaguars are well-known for their biodegradable underhood wiring insulation.