Trash Diary: Day 5, Final Day

Here is my final result of the week! Not too shabby I must say! got pretty full at the end but it is a lot better than I expected. I have to admit, this assignment was interesting. Odd, but interesting. It had meaning behind it which is what matters most. Though this assignment is over, who knows? Maybe this will make me a little more diligent with my trash collection.

So this final load is a mixture of a few things. Another active yogurt, a package wrap that came from the mail that had some new black t-shirts that fit, a few old pieces of paper, and a few miscellaneous items because my dog had apparently at some point on friday, gotten up on my dresser and have a snack on my materials and break a few things...

THE LAST DAY!!!

 

It's the last day for the trash diary..... Yeah!

I just notice that I got my trash can full in one week. That's not a short time, I think... So pretty much That means I don't have so much trash!! I feel really good about myself about my trash.

If I do some analysis:

70% of my trash comes from food: friut pores, snack bags, the meals I can't finish and the plastic bags I used to take food. Many of these can't be changed; they are trash, but they are not waste.

20%  of my trash are paper I used: Text I printed out, homework paper I don't need, article I have read, and notes. Some of them I don't need to get a paper copy at all; however, I feel more comfortable to read in paper. Now I'm trying to use my IPAD as much as possible, and that can help me save a lot of paper.

10% are some additional trash from everywhere, and I can't classify them. But I'm pretty sure I'm not wasting....

OH,let's talk about something special.

Plasitic bags!!!!

I don't need to mention how damage plastic bags can do for the environment, because almost everyone knows that. However, the overuse of plastic bags increases rapidly. Last time I went to Walmart, the people who helped me check out give me too many extra bags. Do I need to separate the Yogort and cheesecake? They just gave me two bags for these! The first picture shows how many plastic bags I saved because I don't like to throw them away.... I wanted to use them as trash bags, but I think I have too many now....

That really need to change. Hope someone can solve this problem.

day4

contrary to my previous beliefs, I ended up producing less waste on one of the days following my previous days. However, the packaging for this capri sun is bigger than previous capri sons, so I dont know which is better, less waste, or a larger container. Food for thought i guess

Day 5- Trash Diary 

I had a water bottle, a package of fruit snacks, a receipt, a lunch card and a paper from science. That's not a bad amount of trash. This project has been really eyes opening. I don't consume a lot of trash and that makes me feel good. I know there are more steps that I can take to make the earth more healthy and green. I've enjoyed this project.   

Sept18+19

The first photo was taken spet 18th, Trash for that day was just 2 bananas and several tissues.
How do we dissolve tissues?
Optimizing the concentration, temperature, flow, and surface tension can improve the tissue-dissolving effectiveness of hypochlorite even 50-fold.
Also, how do we deal with tissues issues at home?
Throw them into the toilet, because the water could dissolve it too.
Food Trash:
How much weight of food trash could be produced by the U.S and global.
In the United States, 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the 430 billion pounds of the available food supply at the retail and consumer levels in 2010 went uneaten. The estimated value of this food loss was $161.6 billion using retail prices. For the first time, ERS estimated the calories associated with food loss: 141 trillion in 2010, or 1,249 calories per capita per day.
-------According to SoSA, Food Waste

SPET 19th

Because yesterday's trash was full, I started a new one.
I started to look at food waste because it surprised me that the most daily trash I have got was the food trash, just like what I thought, according to my research In many developing countries, post-harvest losses of food grains can reach as high as 50%.  This large amount of waste does not only happen in the developing countries, but also happens in the U.S  According a research which was done in 2004,
it was showed that 50% of all food ready for harvest in the United States never gets EATEN!!!

SOLUTION:
Limit the amount of food/fruit that one person could be able to get.
Limit the amount of food/fruit the restaurant could produce for each person.
Increase the tax on food.
Have more AD about food waste.
Require students to take classes about environmental problems.


PLASTIC BAGS:
I feel soooo sorry that I used plastic bag again....

PROBLEMS:
1 bag=1000 years to break down.
It would still have impact on earth after it has broken down.
The U.S. goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags. This costs retailers about $4 billion a year.


SOLUTion:
I have mentioned so many time about it before this post....
1st
Encourage people to use paper bags! Charge them if they have to use plastic!
2ND
Created a plastic tax for people who use it and companies who produce it!

Trash day 5

Today's waste was more routine. My morning trash consisted of the Emergen-C packet, while my afternoon trash consisted of the Hersheys candy wrapper. Today's trash also consisted of a cheetos bag and a water bottle at lunch. Unfortunatly the bag and water bottle were too eager to get to the trash and did so before I could remember to shoot a photo of them. Through out this project, I realized my trash contributions while aren't terribly big, occur on a daily basis. Of course this average amount of daily trash will add up very quickly, especially since other people also have an average amount of daily trash that varies from person to person. However, I fully realzied how quickly trash adds up after watching the first half the "Trashed" movie in class today. We tend to think little of that empty bag of chips we just carelessly discarded into the trash can, but if even 300 million people throw away even one chip bag a day, think about how quickly that can add up. I also realized how much of my waste is actually non-recyclable trash. I believe that is because  I consume a lot of chips and packaged foodstuff  that DON'T come in any sort of recyclable packaging, its all just throw away. In terms of packaged foodstuff, the waste isn't entirely on the consumer end as food industries will sometimes put less content in a bigger bag. This leads to wasted space and extra unnecessary trash. Of course that doesn't matter as long as the industry gets its paycheck.


Yo dawg I heard you like food waste statistics, so I put some statistics with you statistics, do you want fries with that?
Did you know:
-About 40% of food in the good ole U.S.A goes to waste. Hmm maybe I should rethink about what to do with all those not-quite-empty chip bags sitting on my counter...
-More than 97% of all that wasted foodstuff ends up in a landfill. While not fit for human consumption, I'm sure were helping end world hunger for all those being born of toxic, radioactive slime.
-Oh ya that 97% of wasted foodstuff sitting in landfills? That equates to about 33 million tons. Look out ladies and gents we have a new heavy weight champ, and boy is he a waste of space.

source: http://www.endfoodwastenow.org/index.php/resources/facts

Here's a pic of all those uneaten chip bags

Alex Trash 

9/18/14 as well as 9/19/14

(didn't get 9/17/14 trash, but the Wendy's bag was all that was added)

Recycling from week

9/16/14

Day 4 and 5

My last two items of trash are card board instead of plastic. Cardboard is something that I forget about as far as recycling goes. A lot of times I just throw it away.  These both count for today and Friday morning.

Trash days 1-4

  Since the majority of my week wasn't a normal school week, my trash is a bit more random and spontaneous as opposed to what it would have been like had I been to school everyday this week. As an fyi, my usual school cafeteria trash would consist of a water bottle, a bag of chips and a yogurt, while my trash if I pack a lunch consists of a juice box, and one or two Ziploc bags. My morning trash usually consists of a package of emergen-C. Other daily trash includes Kleenex and an occasional candy wrapper. This daily trash adds up to a decent amount of waste by the end of the week. Since food is required to live it is the most consumed. And since most manufactured American food these days seems to come in some sort of packaging, it seems to be the biggest waste producer. It is kind of ironic that that which sustains life comes in something that cannot sustain life.

  Now about my trash, it appears, in spite of the relatively short amount of time to record, that most of my trash is usually produced outside the home. At home,  I have deli and homemade food that isn't individually wrapped. This decreases waste. Even bringing chips to school instead of buying them from the cafeteria can reduce waste as the chip bags are usually bigger and can provide more than the small, disposable snack sized bags. Also a zip-lock bag can be used to bring a snack, then can be re-used if desired due to it being reseal-able,unlike small chip bags that aren't resealable.  Some snacks like crackers come in big boxes, but the small snack sized version ONLY come in the small, non-recyclable plastic bags.

  Just pretend these ramen packages have been ravenously torn open and are now sitting in a pot of boiling water. I admit ramen may be the most wasteful food product I consume in my house as it contains two pieces of packaging:the noodle packaging, and the flavor packet. I usually eat two of these at a time, so that doubles my waste.



  Just in case you can't see clearly, its a Samoa girl scout cookie Crunch bar..best invention ever.  I am however, prone to buy in excess. This leads to a plethora of un-eaten and sometimes un-opened snack foods. The lucky snacks are ironically the ones that are eaten and whose wrappers make it to the trash can, such as this crunch bar.

Day4

       Today I also feel pretty good about the amount of trash I threw away.We finished Annie's birthday cake today. 

       However, there's also something I want to point out: I waste so many paper. Normally, I used a lot of paper to do my homework, do some reviews and print out some ducuments. Though we have IPAD now, sometimes I still prefer paper work.(By the way, I'd like to take notes on paper, so I feel so bad when there are so much paper I don't need, and I have to throw them away, because my notes look so good....) Also, when I'm preparing for SAT, I usually do it on my Ipad; if I print out them, it will use more than sixty pieces of blank paper. That's really a damage for the environment such as deforestation, as all paper is made of wood.

       Furthermore, I find an exact example of packaging waste! Last week I bought a cheesecake from Walmart. The cake has a plastic cover, and outside the plastic power, there is a paper box, but the paper box is no use at all! Why do they put it here! That's a big waste!!!!

     OH there's something I forgot to take picture.... It's my dinner. I don't like our dinner tonight, and I nearly poured all the food... I tried to solve this problem, but I still can't stop wasting this kind of food.

       Hope tomorrow I'll waste even less than today.....

Trash Diary: Day 4

Results of day 4!! Not much added today. It's funny when I see these results because I am a school student and (even though I am avoiding using as much trash as possible at school) I am at school most of the time, I am not really at home to use the trash. This is good for the amount of trash I produce but I wonder how different the results would be if I spent more time at home than I did elsewhere....heheh...good thing that never happens ;)

So today's addition is my breakfast which consisted of a banana and some yogurt. There is also a case of pens to toss, and another yogurt for a small after school snack. Seems a bit bigger of today's addition than usual, but my amount still doesn't come close to what I thought it would be. Wonder what tomorrow's will bring with it's total amount.

 

Day 4: Trash Diary 

Today I was excepting to have almost no trash but that was not the case. I wasted more than I typically do. In science class, we were doing math problems. When I was finished with the papers, I recycled it but that's still waste. In Nail Art Club, I used three Q Tips, a cotton swab and two sponge things. These had to be thrown away. For lunch, I had some chips which resulted in a plastic bag as waste. For breakfast, I had cereal and used but all the milk so I was left with an empty milk carton. My mom recycled it before I could get a picture but so I took a picture of the milk carton that was in the fridge. I took a water bottle to school today so i had no need for a plastic water bottle. I'm really interested in how much water it takes to run a washing machine. The laundry room is right next to my room, so I hear it whenever the wash is being done. On average, washing machines use 40 gallons per wash. The fancy green washing machines use around 15-20 gallons per wash. If people did their laundry once a week, this would probably save lots of water. 

  

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/many-gallons-water-average-washing-machine-hold-full-80612.html

Day 5 - Practice what you preach

Here are my additions for today. The first is a box and some paper from an online purchase. I could have avoided this packaging waste by just going to the store instead of being so lazy. I honestly hadn't given that much thought previously - clearly my priority hasn't been limiting waste, but rather convenience. I'm thinking it's time to change that paradigm. 

The second is some newspaper from Nail Art Club. Neither the cardboard box or the newspaper are particularly egregious. The first trash can  is from school, and considering that I have not emptied it in two weeks, it really doesn't look that bad. Mostly it's a combination of kleenex and random stuff - I sort out the recycling. I'm including it today because I contributed a couple of small items. 

The last photo is my home trashcan and all that's been added is a paper towel (not mine ;) and some coffee grounds. In the summertime I frequently dump the coffee grounds in the flower beds (the flowers love the acid the grounds add to the soil), but I haven't been doing that this fall because they don't need it. The paper towel is biodegradable and is made from recycled material so it's not great, but also not one of the worst offenders. 

I've also figured out that making my own creamer may be the solution to my creamer dilemma. I found a promising recipe (not healthy...but at least I can pronounce all of the ingredients and avoid the plastic packaging). Recipes at this link: http://www.shugarysweets.com/2013/09/pumpkin-coffee-creamer

On a positive note,  I'm pretty sure that our household generates fewer pounds of waste per day than the average American, but we can still improve on that. I'm going to also look into composting, especially since my lovely cousin has given me some good recommendations on quality composting paraphernalia. See this link for more information: https://www.lehmans.com/c-297-composting.aspx

Keeping track of my trash has been truly eye-opening and has challenged me to try to make sure my eco-ethics match my eco-rhetoric. Talk the talk, walk the walk, right?

Day 3

Other than having my normal things, i.e. tow juice boxes and a snack, this morning I had breakfast. With that breakfast I generated two extra pieces of trash, a gallon jug and a small plastic container. Since it isnt every day that this happens, I don't really mark it as a notable difference. Although if I were to substitute homemade food and water for a donut from the local coffee shop and milk, I wouldve generate less waste.

Day 1+2

For the first two days I had nothing of particular interest to report. Every day I just have 3 pieces of trash due to having two juice boxes and a snack of some sort during lunch. Other than that, I am good. For me there is a recognizeable pattern to what waste I generate, simply because I enjoy having a shcedule to follow. I predict that I will likely generate the same amount and type of waste every day for the rest of the year, excluding a few days such as mission week or the menaul challenge.

Here's my trash for the day. Yesterday at lunch I didn't eat all my food and ended up throwing it away which is very wasteful. However, I do have a couple bottles that I will be recycling so yay for me. And as you can see my trash did fill up some and that plate is not the same plate from yesterday my grandma took the first one out because she likes to reuse plastic plates, but then I just ended up throwing away another. I'm pretty pleased with my trash build up. Since there is not much trash added. So I'm pretty happy with myself for not really needing to throw away much. 

Day 3

 This was my trash last night, and no I don't mean my xbox. Normally when I go to the store I try to buy things from the brand 'Nice'. This is because they have reduced plastic containers on most of their products. They are also a lot cheaper than name brand products. So next time you go to the store try to go with a brand like 'Nice'. Esspecially if you're like me and enjoy carbonated water, a lot of times the bottle is super thick and I feel guilty but the ones I drink are actually fairly thin. So keep in mind if you're going to buy plastic products double check for a thinner bottle and less plastic.

Day3 Our Lamp !!

       Ok.... I'm sorry today I wasted food again.... Chumei gave me the tart, but I felt it was so sweet for me after I tasted a little, and I throw the whole one away. That's terrible.... Always, I don't know how to deal with this kind of food. Should I ask someone else to eat it? Or what should I do?
       In fact, there is something special for me to throw today....A lamp! Annie broke it a few days ago(GOOD JOB.....), and I asked Sandra how we should deal with it today. Surprisingly, she just asked me to throw it away. To be honest, what I did in China before is asking someone to fix it when something like lamp is broken. However, as what Sandra said, a lamp is nearly seven dollars in the US, so it's not necessary for people to fix a lamp, instead, they can just buy a new one. In some way that's true, but people should realize that it's still a waste when we throw stuff away, and a lamp is really difficult to be biodegraded. There are so many bad influences when we waste something, for both economy and environment.
      However, my issues about wasting is getting better and better, and now I have a habit that I always take care of something that I'm using, especially when I need to throw something, I'll double check if I'm wasting and If I'm damaging the environment. That's a good start!

Sep 17

Today's  trash is the food waste...
Last week I bought 6 bananas and 4 mangos as the fruits I am going to have for the week.  But i did not finish them.  So the plastic bag became a part of my trash.  According to researches, plastic bags could take up to hundreds years to resolve and it was the top ten amount trash of the world.  There are two ways that I suggested to decrease the amount of plastic bags.  First of all, the shops should charge people for plastic bags.  People have to pay in cash for those bags so that they would prefer to carry their own bags.  Also, the shops should open a program that provide customers paper bags which is more environmental friendly and better for our soil and ocean.
The other big part of my trash is still the used tissues which are caused by my bad cold.  For that problems I really did not know how to decrease the amount of it...
Improvements I had in today's trash is that as we could see, I did not use any of the water bottles at all.  Instead of using the water bottles, I drink directly through the water machine.  To decrease the amount of water bottles, I think the best way for it is just government should provide us more access on water on public places such as schools , hospitals, and even on the streets.  When people have the access to the water, people do not need to carry plastic water bottles with them.

Day 4 - Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock?

One of the questions that keeps coming back to me is which packaging is most environmentally friendly? 

How about glass (rock)? Well it's made out of minerals and such (sand +limestone+heat) www.britglass.org.uk/about-glass. It's highly recyclable and the materials to make it are not renewable, but they are pretty abundant here in the U.S. It also does not have the chemical bisphenol A, which acts like estrogen (the Mayo Clinic suggests that "Exposure to BPA is a concern because of possible health effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children." - see this link http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/bpa/faq-20058331) So not having BPA is clearly a plus for glass. However it is heavy and awkward to transport so it racks up some fossil fuel points due to its weight and bulk. It also gets a bigger carbon footprint because of the energy required to heat glass in the making and recycling process (Bauers). 

If not glass then, should I go for cartons? Well, they are made out of paper so they are biodegradable, right? But being made from paper also means they are made from trees...so they probably contribute to deforestation, although trees are "renewable" since they can be replanted. I read one article that touted cartons as the most environmentally friendly packaging option since they are both light-weight and biodegradable, but their findings were based on a study carried out by.....any guesses?? Yep. A carton manufacturing company. No bias there, right? See the link below to check it out for yourself. http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Packaging/Carton-packaging-is-the-most-eco-friendly-claims-study

So if paper isn't the perfect option, maybe scissors (metal) are? Well, the good news is metal (aluminum and tin) cans tend to be recycled at a high rate (a can gets remade into another can - 68% of material used in aluminum cans is recycled). They are also pretty light weight and space efficient so they require less fuel to transport them. The bad news is that aluminum requires mining when any virgin material is needed and it also contains BPA (Bauers). 

How does plastic match up then (could plastic be anything but lizard...:)? Well, it's light weight and space efficient, but it's made partly from fossil fuels, has bisphenol A, and tends to be recycled at a lower rate (Bauers). And I'm pretty sure it kills lizards and anything else that eats it. Did I mention it's made from fossil fuels like oil? http://www.plasticseurope.org/what-is-plastic/how-plastic-is-made.aspx

Well, that leaves Spock then. Spock being the new scientific invention of plant-based bottles. How does Spock stack up? Well, Spock is in bed with CocaCola and has a large carbon footprint since he's coming from a galaxy far, far away : "Coca-Cola now makes a "PlantBottle" from 30 percent plants. Although some enviro groups didn't like that the plants were sugarcane coming all the way from Brazil, a company spokeswoman said the crop is "rain-fed" on "abundant arable land" (in other words, no rain forests were felled) and fertilized with organics. Coca-Cola has joined with four other companies to accelerate development of a bottle made totally from plants" (Bauers). Cheers to Coke for trying to be more environmentally friendly! Maybe not cheers just yet for Spock, but I love the idea of a more eco-friendly bottle. 

So in the end, what's the best option? I guess the best answer is "it depends." The important take-away, at least for me, seems to be to buy less packaging, reuse it when I can, and then always, always, always recycle regardless of whether it's rock, paper, scissors, or Spock.

Baurers, Sandy. "Which is greener: Glass bottles, plastic bottles, or aluminum cans?"

http://articles.philly.com/2012-07-23/news/32805629_1_pet-bottles-plastic-bottles-glass-bottles

Trash Diary: Day 3

Here is day 3 of the junk in my tru...can. Slowly but surely it is getting bigger. Half way through the week and my can is only almost 1/3 of the way full! I am glad I have been pretty diligent on how much trash I throw out this week.

Today is a bottle of milk, a bag that I finished some kettle corn off of, and a few small pieces of paper that were old including old used lunch cards for school. Unfortunately, as each day goes by, whether I like it or not, this can will fill up.

    

Trash Dairy- Day 3

Once again, I had a banana for breakfast. I threw it away. I forgot my water bottle today and ended up using two plastic water bottles. Yesterday, I took a step forward only to take two steps back today. I bought a water bottle at lunch and found one in my car. The silver lining is that I recycled them! I had two cheese sticks during advisory and recycled them as well. I had a gum wrapper but I forgot to take a picture of it. The longer I document my waste, I am relating that the majority of it is wrapping of food products. Gum, cheese, bananas and the list goes on. I also noticed that I use around three to four paper towels after washing my hands and that isn't good. I'm going to try and cut that down to one and at the max, two. 

According to the Huffington Post, New Mexico is not on the list for the top ten greenest states in America. According to Forbes magazine, New Mexico is number 18 on the list. The list went from the least green to the most green. Vermont is the cleanest state in the country. The common theme was the most rural states with a low population had the least amount of pollution
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/22/greenest-states-us-top-10_n_852683.html
http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/16/environment-energy-vermont-biz-beltway-cx_bw_mm_1017greenstates.html