Garbage Galore!

In My Humble Opinion
1

To kind of piggy back off of the what does your household use the most of and the least of? I’m wondering what everyone’s household garbage production is.

Every garbage day either my husband or I will say, “how can two people produce so much garbage?”. We have a standard size kitchen garbage can that we use 13 gallon bags in. I swear we can fill it every other day or sometimes in one day! We recycle everything that we possibly can. Our recycling bin that gets emptied by the garbage man every other week is filled to the top on pick up day. Our garbage gets picked up once a week and the 32 gallon bin is filled to the top, sometimes the top can’t be closed. We also have 3 dogs, but other than the empty dog food bags once a month or so, they don’t produce any garbage.

I tell my husband that our garbage overload is caused by all of the paper plates he uses. I’m tempted to keep a running list next to the garbage can. When you throw something away, you have to mark it down.

2

Well, most of our food waste goes to the chickens or gets composted. Burnable garbage gets burned in the burn barrel. Everything else comes with me to work, and goes into my dumpster. Every day is garbage day!

I use empty dog food bags, horse-feed bags, sunflower seed bags, cracked corn bags, etc for our garbage.

3

Do either of you drink a lot? Not asking specifically about alcohol, just beverages that come in cans or bottles. They take up more room than you might realize. Do you order a lot online? Other than the obviously recyclable cardboard, packaging adds up. I know you said you recycle everything possible but something unrecyclable is obviously taking up space.

4

We have two 120-litre (30-gallon) wheelie bins provided by the local council. One green for recycling and one grey. They are both emptied on alternate weeks.

We try to minimise packaging when shopping. and many suppliers are moving to recyclable packaging anyway.

We don’t always need to put the green bin out as it can usually cope with a month’s worth. The grey bin gets emptied every fortnight, even if there’s not much in it as it can get smelly.

5

No we don’t drink a lot. No alcohol at all. Other than water and my husband’s one cup of coffee/day, I have 1 can of pop per day and my husband has about the same. Those containers go in the recycling. The water comes from Lake Superior right out of our sink faucets!

I order a lot online but most orders come in cardboard which is recycled or if it’s not too dry outside, my husband will burn it.

6

I fill one 4 gallon trash can per week. The other 95+ percent goes to recycling.

7

OP…are you in a spring clean up mode at the moment?

We don’t have trash pickup.

What we clean out of closets and cupboards and drawers can fill a dump truck. We recycle and donate what we can. Which ain’t easy around here.
Burn any burnables. Food scraps go to the Beagle kennel or chickens.

8

I use a small bag they give me at the grocery store. It lasts 2 days. Just food wrappers, tissues.

9

I have wondered about my neighbors who fill up a large bin each week.

We’re two people and generate a half bag of garbage each week and 1/3 of a bin of recyclables (which we are very conscientious about) every other week.

Many of our neighbors have to put stuff next to their bins each time. What is going on there?

10

We. are the same way. Their bins are heaped every single week. We never produced that much trash when we had 3 kids at home.

With just the 2 of us, we usually use 2 kitchen garbage can bags a week, neither of which is terribly full. Just by the end of the weekend, there is usually enough food matter in it that I toos the bag and start another before Thurs pickup.

11

Lot’s of recycle. Not much garbage.

12

I have less than 1 plastic grocery bag of garbage per week. But I’m older and don’t eat as much as I used to and don’t generate much grocery garbage. Food scraps go in the yard waste bin and most everything else is recyclable paper/cans/etc.

13

I don’t have a bin. I just throw them in the yard.

14

The bulk of my “trash” is recycling, and since I’ve started eating more non-processed food, foot packaging has decreased significantly. I used to have an addiction to Orangina, but I’ve cut that out due to dietary changes.

15

My city just started composting, I wasn’t keen, didn’t think it would reduce that much garbage, nor would we likely ever fill the green bin or come close! We already have blue bin recycling for paper and a separate bin for plastics. The city has also just reduced garbage pick up to every other week, and one fewer bag maximum, down to three from four.

I was wrong, after only one week, our green bin is actually half full.

16

I try. I mean, really try to buy things that have less packaging.
I don’t like to burn more than I have to. Pizza boxes and paper towels kill us.

Most frozen foods can be found in single layer packaging if you look. A frozen hot pocket does not need 3 layers. It would be fine in one plastic bag. Noodles don’t need a plastic package inside a cardboard box.
The company’s feet need to be held to the fire on this. First off.

Next,
Young families are gonna have more trash than an older couple on single person. That’s 'cause kids need lots of junk.

I reuse soap bottles where I can. I buy the plastic bags of liquid soap. It’s usually enough to last 4 mos. In one bag.
Not many people will go that far. They just buy a new bottle.
I encourage my bunch to do the same. It works a little.

Feed bags for animals are always reused til they’re ragged.

17

I’ve always been an extreme recycler as I grew up in a house that was the paper and cans recycling centre for most of the neighbourhood. My parents were involved in Scouts and Guides and they raised funds by selling the paper and cans back when there was no council recycling and a good price for newspapers. Most people took a morning and an evening paper back then, so it soon mounted up. We’d bag it up and store it in the back yard and then a trip to the recyclers every couple of months. We’d usually make about £60 a trip which was not to be sneezed at back in the early '80s.

A couple of years ago some of the UK supermarkets started recycling soft plastics. So all of my crisp packets, bread wrappers and similar go in a shopping bag and I drop it off when it’s full. Likewise for used batteries and LED bulbs.

The only thing that goes in my rubbish bin are things like used cotton buds, fluff from the dryer and the hoover, and the odd bit of packaging that explicitly states non-recyclable. But I try and avoid that where possible. Rubbish is collected fortnightly and the bag I put in the bin is about the size of half a loaf.

I sound like a hippie, but I’m really not. I just hate landfill.

18

I wish we had some sort of recycling program, but we don’t. I took recyclable cans and glass to a neighboring community once, but without proof I lived in the community they wouldn’t take my stuff.

Years ago my town had a recycling I system where you could take glass, cans, plastic, cardboard and dump it into a compartmentalized trailer in town. It was great. They stopped the program because people were “taking advantage” of the program. Restaurants and bars were bringing cans and bottles. The program was supposed to be strictly residential, so they ended it.

19

Domestic collections:
We have two 120 litre wheelie bins provided by the county council - one for recycables, one for general waste, plus a small 25 litre bin for food waste and a 40 litre plastic crate for glass bottles and jars.

The recycling bin is collected once per fortnight, and we will have typically half filled (so 60 litres volume, very loose fill) it with paper, card, plastic bottles and other plastic containers and metal cans

The general waste bin is also collected fortnightly, on the alternate week from the recycling - this, we typically will only have filled about 1/4 to 1/3 full - and it’s only the things we cannot otherwise recycle - used tissues, food packaging that cannot be reasonably cleaned, that sort of stuff.

The food waste bin is collected weekly, but we typically only have put one 10 litre (compostable) bag into it - this tends to be uneaten or spoiled cooked food (of which there is very little in this house), bones (after they have been boiled to make stock). This food waste goes off to a digester/composter to make biogas and soil conditioner.

The glass bottle box is collected fortnightly, I think, but we only put it out if it’s somewhat full, which is about every 6 weeks

Composting:
All vegetable trimmings and garden prunings, clippings and other waste are composted onsite

Not collected for recycling, but we do recycle:
Laminated packaging such as tetra packs and pringles-type cardboard tubes
Aluminium foil
Soft plastics such as bags and wrappers
Batteries
Fabrics

There are various collection points around town where we can deposit the above items for recycling, so we save them up and drop them when we are going there for any reason

Bulky Waste:
There’s a council-operated household waste site where we can take things for disposal or recycling - we generally store it on site until it’s enough to be worth taking (for example at the moment, we have the metal frame of a wheelbarrow that we found buried in the garden - this will go in the steel bin at the waste site).
This site has a lot of different categorised bins for waste and recycling - chiefly: wood, metals, rocks and soil, garden waste, general bulky waste (which might be things like mattresses, plastic garden toys etc), paint, oil, light bulbs etc.

Furniture and other durable items, we donate to charity shops if they have use left in them, otherwise they go to the waste site above.

20

Nope, not doing any spring cleaning that involves getting rid of junk. Although, that will be on the horizon. After my MIL died a month ago, we had to sell her house. She was not a saver, but it still seemed to take forever to clear out her house. I’m thinking of our poor daughter now when we we’re gone and she has that job. There’s a lot of stuff! We have a basement, attic cubby hole, garage, small barn, garden shed, and another structure called The Shack. Not to mention the regular bedroom closets. I think this fall we will rent a dumpster and start tossing what we don’t donate.