waste management

I took note of the trash I produced for a week. I did so by taking photos and listing things in a .txt doc as I was discarding them. The “waste” chart is calculated by either instances of the event, such as toilet paper is calculated by how many times I went to the bathroom. Some items were more calculable such as the cans of cat food I end up recycling each week, I always feed my meows one can per cat…. soooometimes more, but not often. So, I know that I use 21 cans per week. Others were even estimated, such as paper towels, one of my cats, Koshka, has been throwing up a lot, and I have needed to clean up very large and wet messes involving lots of paper towels. I was not able to count, nor can I remember how many were used, especially when I am doing so freshly ripped from bed at 5 in the morning.
So the data isn’t highly accurate, but using my comparative judgement and hard numbers

These were the majority of items that passed through m hands and into either a trash bin or recycling container. Even though I labeled the chart “waste”, I did recycle a lot of the items. From the values I plugged into the above the chart, I made another by figuring out how many of those items or instances of them went into the recycling bin.

Based on the figures and items listed throughout the week, there are some things that come out as clear solutions to the waste problem.

Let’s look at the top three contenders:
Toilet paper – I go pee a lot. I admit the small nature of my bladder, plus I constantly have a beverage/water in hand. Plus I am also willing to admit that I menstruated this week, which automatically heightens the number of trips to the bathroom. The only solution I see to this problem is if I do like Indonesians do, use water, not toilet paper. I found this method clean and incredibly tolerable right off the bat. Just need to get a bucket!

Cat food cans – I use the 5.5 oz cans, perhaps buying the 12 oz cans will reduce the amount of packaging and metal waste, even if I do recycle them, the process still takes energy.

Plastic bags – Ok, clearly I need to become more diligent with carrying my own bag and make sure that the person who is bagging my goods does not unnecessarily double bag.

It seems that most of these items can be swapped with reusable alternatives.
tampons/pads – they have washable cloth pads
beverage container – thermos
paper towels – washable rags