Update: Earlier in January of this year, I
embarked on an experiment to try and track what the amounts and types
of trash I was throwing out on a daily basis. Included were five
groupings; aluminum, steel, paper, plastics, compost and
miscellaneous. The first four were items my town of Forsyth Missouri
accepts for recycling. My kitchen scraps went to a compost pile and
everything else (including glass which the city does not recycle) was
placed in a dumpster that will end up in a landfill. Not included
also were things like yard waste (it's all recycled or burned) or
items like clothing, electronics or whatnot. Most of that stuff is
either donated or sold in springtime garage sales. (If
something does go to the transfer station over the course of my three
month study, then it will be documented as 'special items').
After some setup problems early on, I
have managed to come up with a spreadsheet that seems to work OK.
From it, I have now accumulated hard data that covers eleven days and
which shows me to be discarding about a pound of stuff a day with
only ten percent of that figure going to the dump. This, by the way, is
considerably under the EPA's 2009 estimate of 5.1 pounds per person per
day. I plan to hold off on posting actual quantities of individual
items unto I have a full month's worth of data.
No comments:
Post a Comment