Trash, Garbage, Waste, Consider the Receptacle

I started re-watching Dead Poets Society last night. It’s an old movie. So old that when Robin Williams’ character passes the trash bin for his lads to toss in pompous rules about poetry, the bin is (*gasp*) bare naked, nary a liner to be seen.

What follows is food for thought, some ideas to reduce unnecessary waste. Don’t worry if you can’t get it perfect. I sure don’t. Different circumstances and all that. The main take-away is: just think for a sec before reaching for a disposable. Whatever it is, recyclable, reusable,… if it’s not necessary, then don’t take it or use it in the first place.

This applies right down the trash receptacle itself.

Ask yourself, do I really need to line my garbage/recycling can with a (brand new) plastic bag?

I mean, it’s garbage, after all.

Sometimes, for the likes of raw chicken parts or coffee grounds, you’ll want some kind of liner; but before you reach for the virgin plastic bag with plastic cinch tie, be creative – use the bag that came with your new (fill in the blank – food dehydrator, in my recent case); or put gross stuff into the empty ice cream carton (you have an excuse to finish that off!), or at least use one of any of the gazillion plastic shopping bags that have already served their first purpose. (It’s sadly better, environmentally, than “recycling” them, though that effort is better than trashing them in the first place.)

If you forget your grocery tote bag or are simply not quick enough to stop the bag-boy/woman/man from putting your ice cream into its own plastic bag, do reuse that bag for lining a can, scooping pet poop,…

If you do use a liner (at my house, we do for kitchen waste – usually one of those plastic bags – they’re everywhere), then smoosh the trash – can, box, what-have-you,… — before tossing. That way, you take up less space in the bin, requiring fewer liners (and bonus: fewer trips to empty it!). Back before we could recycle milk cartons, they’d go into the trash. By fold-squishing the box beforehand, there was more space in the trash bin = less emptying = fewer liners.

And then there’s the recycling trash.

If you’re lucky enough to have curbside pick-up for recyclables, then you know what I’m talking about: a separate bin for those items – magazines, office paper, cans, bottles,… However you keep track of those things inside the house, chances are good that another plastic liner is unnecessary. Rinse off any food stuffs, then take some care when depositing them. For example, orient the empty sardine can open side up, same with the wine bottles. I finally got around to calling some of the catalog companies to ask that they stop sending. It feels sisyphean, but I know it’s not.

Here’s a picture of our kitchen system: Big bin for recyclables; middle little bin with old bag liner for garbage; front little bin, unlined, for compost.

By the way, those colorful small bins that make it possible to have three containers in a two-container space come in all sorts of colors. Here’s what I got.

For recyclable plastic stuffs, reuse as much as you can. Or find someone who can. (Purveyors at our farmers markets are grateful to clean egg cartons and even those berry clamshell things.) Unfortunately, putting them into the recycling, doesn’t guarantee that happens. (I know, don’t you wish you hadn’t just read that?!); the recycling process is itself resource-intensive and can generate nasty by-products (argh); and there is less demand for recycled plastic stuffs than for making brand new plastic stuffs.

Oy, it’s dizzying. But rewatching that Dead Poets scene reminded me how normal life, not so long ago, hardly ever involved plastic bags. Grocery bags were paper; sandwich bags were wax; and you tossed garbage, sometimes in a paper bag, straight into aluminum bins with matching lids. (In the bear and raccoon country of northern Minnesota, we added sproinging bungee cords to fasten down those lids.)

If it feels daunting in today’s world,

just remember the takeaway: Go to the source. Ask yourself, is that plastic bag really necessary? and whenever possible, try not to get stuff that you won’t use up or keep.

That’ll leave your hands free to carpe diem! RIP, Robin Williams.