Garbage

A few weeks ago, as I tied up the garbage, I noticed that we seemed to be putting a bag of garbage from the house out to the garage bin only about once a week and I remember thinking "that's pretty good--I wonder if we could reduce even more."

And last year, actually Christmas of 2009 a friend of mine gave me a 2010 page-a-day calendar and on each page was one thing you could do to reduce, reuse or recycle. I dutifully tore off the pages as the year slid away. And patted myself on the back many times and thought more than once "well, we already do so many of these things. I mean really we didn't need this calendar."

Or so I thought.

Then, last week, I discovered the Zero Waste Home and was blown away by this family's dedication to our world. Extreme? Yeah, maybe. Impressive and inspiring? Definitely.

Truth be told, I know and have known that we could do so much more to reduce our waste and even as 2010 drew to a close and I recycled the plastic base of the calendar (or tried to--Aidan actually decided that he "needed" it), I knew that we would need to up-the-ante this year. We reduce our consumption where we can, we reuse items that can be put to multiple purposes and we recycle the rest, which makes us feel good. But the first step--refusing to consume things we really don't need or seeking out items that have less or no packaging--that requires a whole nother level of commitment.

Yes, I realize "nother" is not a word and "whole nother" is not a phrase, but I like saying it:-)

When we designed our home, we purposely left off the basement and the attic. We knew we would need storage. But we also knew that when we had larger storage areas, thinking "this is cool, now our stuff won't get all discombobulated and disorganized", we tended to fill those spaces up with more stuff. And the stuff collected dust and well, in one instance, cat pee....

but that's another story.

Of course, we "need" certain things and our culture and lifestyles have developed a system whereby we purchase these things, in multiple layers of packaging more often than not. But as I perused the Zero Waste blog, I discovered many creative ways to circumvent all those layers of packaging. And while I see now how much more we can do, I am ready to stop being complacent and complicit. My dollars are my votes. We can no longer wait for companies to "do the right thing". We need to let them know what we will accept and pay for. If we care about our planet, our home; if we care about our children's futures then we will do this.

Less garbage in 2011 sounds good to me!