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| Waste Not: Week 2 of 2 (Week 1) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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This Week's Project - Projects to Date - Daily Picts - FAQ - Project Invitation - Participants
Waste Not: Week 2 of 2 (Week 1) View Week 1 of this project | Projects to Date
Day 8
Date: 12.10.00
Items:
daily 16
total 142
Plastic:
2 cream cheese containers
1 Styrofoam cup
1 coffee cup lid
1 soup bowl
1 soup bowl lid
1 spoon plastic smoothie seal
Cardboard/paper:
1 coated Ice cream container
1 coated ice container lid
1 coated milk carton
1 soiled napkin
1 soiled paper bag
Other:
1 twist tie
1 rubber PDA cover prototype
Comments:
A day at the Institute's coffee shop and a Border's coffee shop left me with almost a dozen plastic items. While many of the items were made of recyclable plastics, neither venue provided any plastic recycling facilities.
Day 9
Date: 12.11.00
Items:
daily 19
total 161
Plastic:
1 spent ball-point pen
1 plastic plate
1 packet of duck sauce
1 plastic fork
1 ziplock bag
1 bubblewrap bag
1 square of packing foam
3 sheets of software shrink wrap
Cardboard/paper:
1 coated cardboard envelop box
1 ice cream sandwich wrapper
3 paper towels
1 napkin
Other:
1 beer cap
1 spent CDR "coaster"
1 plastic padded mailing envelope
Comments:
Today was the annual museum cleanup day. At the outset I was worried that I would need a wagon to carry everything. Fortunately my ever devoted coworkers did an excellent job of breaking down and recycling almost everything we discarded. Once again, the free lunch in the museums restaurant generated a considerable amount of plastic.Day 10
Date: 12.12.00
Items:
daily 8
total 169
Plastic:
1 piece of packing Styrofoam (1/8th)
1 fortune cookie wrapper
1 CDR wrapper
1 plastic bag
Cardboard/paper:
1 soiled paper plate
1 soiled napkin
1 paper flour bag
Other:
1 orange juice can and lid
Comments:
A relatively typical worked day. Kris and I baked Biscotti in preparation for holiday gift giving. As usual, most of the collected waste is packaging. A fairly even split between home and work.
Day 11
Date: 12.13.00
Items:
daily 8
total 177
Plastic:
3 plastic paper bags
2 pieces of shrink wrap
1 tape dispenser
1 mailing label sleeve
Cardboard/paper:
none
Other:
1 foil/paper fruit wrapper
Comments:
Today's waste is almost entirely plastic. The majority of the plastic is wrappers or non-reuseable bags. The computer is a big offender in this area. Everything from discs, software and the hardware itself is wrapped in some type of cellophane. It's light, it compresses down nicely, but it everywhere and it will be around for a long time.
Day 12
Date: 12.14.00
Items:
daily 3
total 180
Plastic:
1 drinking straw
1 scotch wrapper
Cardboard/paper:
1 Federal Express envelope
Other:
None
Comments:
A very light day. Lots of recycling, very little waste. The courier envelope is made of a a wide variety of materials and portions of it could be recycled if it were properly dissected. Unfortunately, its not clear how to do it easily and would be considered "too much work" by most.
I'm inclined to go off on a rant about e-commerce, expanding competitive courier services and energy inefficiency here. Maybe later...
Day 13
Date: 12.15.00
Items:
daily 6
total 186
Plastic:
1 dry cleaning bag
1 pretzel bag
2 computer software bags
Cardboard/paper:
1 coated candy wrapper
1 soiled napkin
Other:
None
Comments:
Today I started on our home wireless DSL installation which generated a lot of recyclable cardboard packaging and some plastic. Three of the four components were packaged by Apple computer utilizing only recyclable cardboard. The Qwest equipment was also packaged with mostly cardboard with a minimum of plastic. You'll notice there is no Styrofoam in the picture. I congratulate both companies.
Day 14
Date: 12.16.00
Items:
daily 10
total 196
Plastic:
2 wall phone mountings
1 plastic bottle seal
Cardboard/paper:
1 Coconut extract box
1 waxed paper
1 soiled napkin
1 wrapping paper
1 worchestshire sauce wrapper
Other:
2 bottle caps
Comments:
In contrast to the last dew days, most of today's waste is in the form of coated paper, again mostly packaging. Today was the IMG staff's annual holiday party in which everyone traded wrapped gifts. Much of the wrapping paper was coated in plastic or foil making it difficult to recycle.The phone mounting is another part of the DSL installation. All wall mounted phone jacks had to be replaced with filtered jacks. The old jacks were dirty, worn and questionable to begin with, so I decided to discard them. Unfortunately, like lots of electronic and construction components, they are not recyclable.
Week 2 Totals
Dates: 12.10-12.16.00
Total items: 70
Weights
Non-recyclable Plastic 13oz.
Non-recyclable Paper 14.5 oz.
Non-recyclable other 2oz.
Week 1 Total Weight 29.5 oz (1.8 lbs.)
Size: Approximately 1 cubic foot
Comments:
Ironically, even with the Museum's staff clean-up day, my waste for the second week is significantly less than the first. Much of this can be attributed to travel and the lack of recycling opportunities available outside of the home.While traveling last week I came upon an interesting article by Martha Nichols in the Utne Reader on how Europe is dealing with it's packaging problems, making the manufacturer responsible for recycling and/or disposing of the packaging they produce. You can read the article online at "A Package Deal"
2 Week Project Totals
Dates: 12.03-12.16.00
Total items:
Week 1 126
Week 2 70
Total 196
Weights
Non-recyclable Plastic 25 oz.
Non-recyclable Paper 25.5 oz.
Non-recyclable Other 26 oz.
Week 2 Total Weight 76.5 oz. (4.8 lbs.)
Size: Approximately 1.5 cubic feet
Comments:
One of the my most disturbing observations is that the life of the wealthy is much freer of trash than those of lesser means. Those people who have the means to eat at restaurants with cloth, silver and china, or time to fix a a meal from fresh ingredients are much less likely to generate the piles of waste that the person of lesser means generates in the ever growing world of fast food and over-packaged products.
I find this all pretty ironic when you consider the true economic and environmental costs of designing, producing, and distributing the packaged materials on the front end and the tremendous financial and environmental costs of disposing these same materials days, weeks or months later. It seems clear to me that this system must ultimately cost more than the alternatives, but a lot of big industries reaping great profits from both sides of our short sightedness. Restaurants no longer need dishwashers, just larger dumpsters. After all, garbage is easier to manage than people.
Trash Carrying Bag
At the completion of the first week, I was carrying more trash than could comfortably fit in my briefcase. I was then forced to use a secondary bag. For this, I chose a gym bag. By the end of the second week I had completely filled the gym bag. Neither of these bags seemed to attract much attention even when carried into meetings or family gatherings. However, if the project went on much longer I would have to adopt a cart or hockey equipment bag to keep things manageable. Surely these solutions would have drawn a bit more attention.
