One Man's Trash

By Sharon Wetteland

If you had to carry your garbage with you for a week, how much would you be lugging around? Now subtract what can be recycled. Any smaller? What if you could give some of it away for someone else to use or you could turn it into fertilizer for your plants? Even better?

I began asking myself these questions as I took out the trash one day, so I decided to experiment. There are just two of us in our household. Exactly how much trash did we generate in a week? How much of a difference did recycling actually make in our household?

I decided to track our garbage by weight. I would weigh all of the garbage and subtract the weight of anything being recycled. I found that my mother was right all along. The trick to this recycling thing, as in so many things in life, is to plan ahead and to pay attention. Have a place prepared to hold each item you are recycling, preferably where you use that item, and put it there. Early in this process I found myself stopping at the trash can and weighing in my mind that which I would be weighing at the end of the day. Where could I place this for the most value? I found I am great about composting in the summertime, but that a bitter below-zero wind can make a woman weak.

In the end I was truly surprised at the difference. We were able to reduce our trash an average of 60 percent and increase our recycling by paying attention into which bin we placed our trash. I recycled cardboard, glass, cans, plastic, and composted kitchen scraps. As I shopped, I found myself thinking about the amount of packaging waste various items would produce and changed some purchases accordingly. What difference does recycling make on a larger scale? Am I really reducing my trash or just sorting it and moving it around? What happens after I drop it off? I decided to find out.

First, I called a couple of companies that pick up trash and recycling. Curbside recycling programs are mandated (and subsidized) by the State of Minnesota and many other states. I was provided a list of items that can be recycled: all kinds of colored and glossy papers as well as newsprint, phone books, and magazines. Spiral notebooks—metal wire and all—glass, cardboard (both colored and plain), and most plastics are recyclable. Just about anything can now be recycled. Exceptions are waxed cardboard—the type that frozen foods come in—and a few plastics like the little plastic handle bags from grocery stores. While these waste companies charge extra if your trash exceeds the amount that fits into your can, they do not charge for excess recycling.

I learned that it is against Minnesota state law to discard electronics. We are required to recycle everything from television sets to handheld electronics, such as cell phones and similar devices. An average TV set contains more than five pounds of lead, not something we want to risk leaching into the groundwater. You are not sure that is really an issue? One in every five Superfund sites in the nation is a former municipal solid waste landfill and a major contaminant from these landfills is lead in groundwater. Superfund sites are areas that have released or threaten to release hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. The United States Environmental Protection Agency currently lists 1,240 sites on the Superfund National Priority List, an additional 317 have been delisted after cleanup, and 61 new sites have been proposed.

Lead can cause a number of health conditions in adults but young children absorb lead more easily than adults and their brains and nervous systems are more sensitive to lead’s harmful effects. Lead can cause everything from learning problems to slowed growth to brain damage in young children. To learn about lead poisoning and prevention go to the Center for Disease Control’s website: www.cdc.gov

I also spoke to metal recyclers. Crow Wing Recycling is an outstanding local example of “closed loop recycling.” This means there is a ready market for the recycled product—in this case, scrap metal—and the recycling process has become an integral part of the industry. Metals are by far the star of the recycling world. Nearly every metal product made has some degree of recycled metal, such as cars, metal pipes, wire, bicycles, and tin cans.

Consumers can also be paid for most of their recycled metals at local recycling centers that take everything from rusted cars and car parts to screen doors, old metal patio furniture, metal window frames, even extension cords—anything with metal in it. Most items fetch a price per pound, which is a nice payoff for a day of cleaning out the garage. Crow Wing Recycling used to charge people to drop off old appliances, but no more. Now you can drop them off free of charge and save the fee you would pay at the dump to discard them.

Recycling is not just an alternative to traditional garbage dumping; it is the foundation for manufacturing companies that use recyclable materials. Virtually all aluminum cans on the market are made from recycled aluminum cans. You might be surprised to note that Anheuser Busch, maker of Budweiser beer, is the world’s largest recycler of aluminum cans. They are driving the aluminum industry and, by doing so, are able to control the cost of their cans. The EPA states that “recycling aluminum cans saves 95 percent of the energy required to make the same amount of aluminum from its virgin source.” Think what an impact it would have on the recycling industry if Coca Cola and Pepsi decided to put the same effort into recycling the plastic water and soda bottles generated from their plants all over the world. By closing the loop on plastics—as has been done in metal recycling and choosing to create an environment where plastic has value—the face of the industry could change.

In the end, I had to ask myself a few questions. Is profitability the only measure of a good thing? What kind of world do I want to leave my children and grandchildren? If I really believe that this can make a positive impact on the place I live, why wouldn’t I choose to act?

I tried explaining the political and social upheavals during the late ’60s and early ’70s to a coworker who was born in 1977. I told her how we traveled door to door to collect blankets to ship across the globe to refugees in Bangladesh, how the gutters in big cities used to be filled with garbage indiscriminately thrown from car windows, and how young people became involved to change the issues of the day. I wondered aloud where that kind of open social and environmental concern had gone. Perhaps we have forgotten the old African proverb: “When you pray, move your feet.” If we really wish for something positive to happen, we must begin to move our feet, collectively and individually, to create the world we wish to see, starting in our own homes. I, for one, am going to keep it up.

Move Your Feet:

At the current national rate of about 26 percent, recycling using current methods saves enough energy to supply nearly the energy needs of the state of Minnesota, which ranks twentieth in overall energy consumption in the nation. The Energy Information Administration reports that Minnesota consumes more energy than New Hampshire, Hawaii, Delaware, South Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, combined.

Prepare a convenient place to hold recyclables. Weigh your garbage for a week, then do the same the following week while recycling.

If your current provider does not offer paper recycling, ask for it. Paper is one of the most under-recycled products. All colors, types, and grades of paper can be recycled, even envelopes with plastic windows. Recycled paper uses 60 percent less energy to produce than virgin paper. Each ton of recycled paper equals seven thousand gallons of water saved and fewer chemicals flushed into our rivers.

Remodeling? Donate items to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore. A list of store locations is available online. www.habitat.org/cd/env/restore.aspx

Glass is also a good recyclable material and an amazing number of things are made with it. Enviroglas, for instance, is a company using recycled glass to mimic granite in countertops and other surfaces.

For other materials (mainly some plastics), it actually costs more to recycle the product than it does to make it from scratch. Choosing non-plastics or making sure that water bottles (the most common plastic) make it into the recycling bin does make a difference. There are new corn-based plastics being tested that can be composted. Better yet, use reusable cloth bags for groceries or choose paper over plastic and recycle or compost it.

Patagonia is producing and recycling used Polartec fleece, Capilene and Synchilla fabrics through their Common Threads recycling program. www.patagonia.com/recycle.

Contact companies you would like to see do more. Are you a Coke or Pepsi drinker? Ask them to act, especially in plastics, as Anheuser Busch has done with cans. Let them know you intend to stop buying beverages in plastic containers and then vote with your dollars. www.cokefeedback.com or www.pepsi.com.