For this assignment, I kept track of all the trash I threw out in the span of two days. All the items I would have thrown out, apart from objects flushed down the toilet, were kept by me in a bag until the two days were over. They were then written down on a list that I will summarize and analyze. The point of this exercise was to familiarize myself with the different ways my waste is managed: how far it goes, how long it takes to decompose, what it says about me as a consumer. After the summary, I will look at my ecological footprint to see if there are any ways I can introduce less waste into the environment.
The most waste I threw out by volume was plastic from food packaging. Six of the thirteen items on my list were from packaged food. These included several containers of ready-made food, a yogurt cup, a sandwich wrap, a nutrition bar, and a bag of chips. I suspected this would be where most of my waste came from, because I hardly ever cook my meals. My wife either does it for me, or I eat something ready-made.
When judging by weight, all the paper I threw out at work is probably more than the food packaging. I throw out about a pound of paper per day at work, all of it recycled. This is because I am an accountant at a printing company, and one of my duties is to discard all the old jobs we did. Throwing out these jobs contributed the most to my waste pile, while various other duties provided smaller amounts, like throwing away opened envelopes and spam from the mail.
The least amount of garbage I threw out on this two-day project was food compost; only two of my items were solid food that went into the compost bin. One was a moldy blueberry; the other was a banana peel. Food compost was my lowest type of garbage because I have a habit of finishing my meals. It is very rare that I waste anything on my plate. If I am unable to finish a meal, I save the leftovers for eating later.
My garbage mostly came from paper and plastic. A couple miscellaneous items I threw away are a light bulb and a baby diaper. The light bulb was made of glass, copper wire, and various other metallic elements. Aluminum was the biggest component, consisting of the base of the bulb and the heat deflector. Tungsten, being the element with the highest melting point, is notoriously found in the filament that lights the bulb. Other elements include copper, molybdenum, nickel, and iron (Harris, 2002). The disposable diaper was made wood pulp and a variety of plastics.
Paper and plastic can be found in so many of my disposable items because they are cheap to produce. I think paper is especially cheap because it can be recycled. It seemed like there was a correlation to the cost of my items and the amount of paper or plastic in them. The diaper and the light bulb cost more than the others by weight.
I believe this garbage reflects my desire to be environmentally conscious as a minimalist. At the same time, there are things I would not have discarded if I were fully conscious, such as food packaging. This is a result of my busy lifestyle, which does not provide me a lot of time for cooking. And sometimes I am in such a rush that I do not stop to think about what I am buying.
The time it takes for these products to break down varies by composition. Paper takes 2-5 months to decompose; food compost less than a year; plastic over 500 years (possibly forever); the glass from a light bulb about a million years (Science Learning Hub, 2008). The garbage that I throw away is picked up by Waste Management, who hauls it to a transfer station where it is either recycled or relayed to an RDC container on a county truck. The truck transports it to a rail facility in Everett, about 10 miles from here. Garbage is then boxed into freight containers, where it is sent by rail all the way to the Roosevelt Landfill in Klickitat County in southern Washington. This is 10-hour trip that spans about 250 miles!
For the second part of the assignment, I took a test at Footprint Calculator3 to see if my kind of lifestyle would be sustainable for the Earth if everyone did the same things as me. Sadly, I found out that we would need 2.4 Earths to sustain the global population if everyone lived the same way I did. On the bright side, my footprint was almost half the U.S. average (Global Footprint Network, 2021).
There are several ways I can get my ecological footprint lower. My high scores on meat consumption, commuting by car, and living space can all be adjusted. But even if I adjusted those, my score would still be high. I took a retest that told me we would still need 1.5 Earths to sustain someone like me if I changed my answers to: eating meat occasionally, living in an apartment, taking public transportation. It was only after changing the answers to eating no meat, living in an apartment, and no transportation that I was able to get the score under 1.
This alternative lifestyle is not very practical for me, considering I am the breadwinner in a family of three. I suppose I could try harder to find a job where I could work from home, but that would only take away someone else’s opportunity to do it. Plus, someone else would have to take over my job anyway. They would probably have to commute from farther away, seeing as I only need to drive for ten minutes to get to my office.
Eating vegan is something I have never tried, that I am willing to do if I can convince my wife to join me. We could also try moving to a smaller house or apartment, or “live off the land” somewhere. This would pose quite a few inconveniences, and I am not sure we would be able to save enough money for our child and his education. There is a lot of uncertainty under such a scenario.
It made me sad to find out I was still contributing to environmental degradation despite taking multiple steps to counter-act it. I used to think I was a minimalist, but it is now clear that living in the U.S. automatically disqualifies me as one. Just by living in our social structure, it is nearly impossible to get a score low enough to keep the planet healthy. This appears to be because of all the space we use, the energy we rely on, and the products we buy. Things like voting Democrat, recycling, buying local, and consuming and driving less do not appear to be enough to get anyone’s score in this country under 1. More radical measures are needed that as a society we need to address. Capitalism and “freedom” seem like they are so firmly rooted in our collective conscience that it would be unrealistic to consider radical alternatives like limiting commute time. Although, the covid-19 pandemic has helped reveal how a radical shift like this is possible. Eliminating commutes seems like a good first step we can take as a society to getting our number closer to 1.
My wife and I thought it was gross carrying around a bag of garbage all day. It was for a good cause though. We both learned a lot from this project and are making active adjustments to combat the environmental issues plaguing our planet. If it were not for this class and this project, we would be totally unaware of what is going on. Rather than relying on an obscure college class (no offense) to inform people, the education and media systems in our country could do more to bring these issues to light. I believe if there was more awareness about what humans are doing to the planet, more people would be willing to take proactive steps the same way my family is doing.
References
Tom Harris. How Light Bulbs Work. February 19, 2002.
Measuring Biodegradability. Science Learning Hub. June 19, 2008.
What Is Your Ecological Footprint? Global Footprint Network. 2021.
Getting Down to Basics: Where Does Our Garbage Go? Snohomish County
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