I’m calling on those interested to embrace their inner cheeky parrot, crow and bin chicken: Go Through Your Junk And Categorise It. Do it for a single bin load, a whole week’s worth of waste or note what you throw away for the whole month. Measure it by number of items, weight or another way you think of.
Here’s a couple of links:
Let us know:
How long you’re tracking your rubbish for
How you’re tracking
WHAT you’re tracking (recycling? waste bin? Both? Organic scraps as well)
This is just tracking! But tracking leads to behaviour change.
We can do the first week of January. In photos. 1 full human at an exhausted will be 33? weeks pregnant, 1 adult cat, not pregnant. Suspected assorted guests.
I will do photos of all waste at home and away from home, and then post photo and categories. Except flushable waste. There are only 2 or 3 work days in week one, so it should be possible. But I might still be tidying and organizing baby supplies so the waste packaging could be a horror.
trash pandas! Hahaha, yes, if intent is like rummaging through garbage. If intent is like hoarding of (seemingly) random things (junk), I suppose magpies (although that shiny object stealing thing is a myth). We don’t have them everywhere, though (only in the west) (I never saw one until I was 21!).
I am at least going to follow along here. My heart drops at the idea of doing a bin audit, which means it would probably be very good for me to do one. We usually have 1-2 gallons of trash a week and a 10 gallon bin of recycling, but just. UGH. It’s all horribleeeeeee.
Day 2, reused tea leaf pic, didn’t eat a banana. Not shown 2-3 tissues and restaurant leftovers of omelette and potatoes (not enough to pack up). No pics of work garbage because that’s different
It’s become quickly apparent that I need a separate bin for the soft plastics so that I can work out what the worst offenders are. I suspect dry fruit and cereals.
I also threw out the little windows from envelopes, some mail bags that I wasn’t sure if they’re recyclable, and a plastic bag from bread today.
The good thing is that if it is dried fruit and cereal, those are easy fixes through bulk stores (if you have one handy or spoons to get there) or sourcing bigger bags than you’d normally buy and storing in air tight containers until you get through them.
Also also, (apologies if you do not have the spoons for hearing these right now) I think the plastic windows in envelopes can stay where they are in the envelope and go into the recycling bin, no need to separate. Plastic mail bags/satchel can either be turned inside out and reused as another mail bag (Aus post will now let you use your own mail bag) or recycled through terracycle (I know urban rev takes them back and I’d be happy to take them and add to my pile to drop there next time I go in if there isn’t a terracycle drop point near you).
Don’t delete! Buuut yeah I won’t have spoons to do any changes yet. This thread is for focusing on WHAT the junk is first, and just tracking. Changes come after data collection
The end of my junkuary tracking! Missing are probably a few more tea leaves, a few tissues a day, mostly with nose blood. A q tip every other day.
It’s almost all compost or plastic. I think that in the far future I will contact my local politicians about compost options for apartments. The other thing I noticed is that because I have lots of prepared food right now, I’m having very little takeout. And as well as costing more, the takeout comes with way way more garbage. Obviously individually packaged foods aren’t good, but they aren’t the worst. I showed off some food waste. Most of that I would have rolled the dice on if I wasn’t knocked up. Overall I think that it is less bad than I’d feared, but less good than is ideal.
I’m following other people’s waste logs but trying not to comment because it’s quite personal really.
Ok. Ugh. I’m gonna try it. I’ll try to catalogue all our household waste (both me and Wizard) and any waste I produce when out of the house (e.g. at work), but can’t say anything about Wizard’s out-of-the-house waste production.
I feel like a long list will be more effective for plonking me in the head than photos, plus it’s easier on me because I can just write it in the good old bujo.
I know that a decent amount of our waste is compostable, so this will hopefully be a good impetus to get that dang worm bin.
This week I made a large pile of green waste. I’m pretty sure our garden waste is why our mixed waste bin keeps getting full. I don’t have the space to do a proper hot compost at home, so I’m picking up large reusable green waste bags from the local council this month. Every waste stream I separate out is a little closer to having the capacity to measure what’s left a bit better.
Hahaha, yes, if intent is like rummaging through garbage. If intent is like hoarding of (seemingly) random things (junk), I suppose magpies (although that shiny object stealing thing is a myth). We don’t have them everywhere, though (only in the west) (I never saw one until I was 21!).
