Friday, September 4, 2009

Trash

Here are some pictures of only *part* of the trash that one office building produces *daily*:







What do you throw away?

--Fin

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Single Serving World

We are a single serving society. Everywhere you look you see single serving products:

Individual water bottles, "lunch sized" bags of chips, cans of soda, boxes of juice, lunchables, Styrofoam cups for coffee, individual sugar packets and creamers, tv dinners, single serving candy, yogurt, paper plates, plastic silverware, travel sized beauty products.......and this is just off the top of my head!

Almost every day for lunch I send Fate with leftovers for lunch. I send them packaged individually in *reusable* containers. He brings them home (mostly every day) and I wash them and they get used over and over again. I need to start remembering to send him with silverware too, I'm just afraid I'll run out of forks when he forgets to bring them back!

The point here is that its not enough to just recycle, and as a matter if fact most people don't even do that one little thing. Even if they recycle at home, I have to wonder if that extends to work? In the building I clean on a daily basis I dump trash and it really hits home how much people don't recycle, or for that matter even think about reducing their trash output. I see trash cans full of single use products all day long around here.

If people would just change their habits in one or two little ways it would make such a difference on their trash output:

Bring a reusable water bottle and fill up from the sink when it gets empty

Bring silverware to work and wash it when your done

Bring leftovers in reusable containers, take them back home and wash them

Buy in bulk and split stuff into reusable containers instead of single serving packages of items

Bring your own coffee mug and reuse it

We do as much composting and recycling as we can possibly can at home, and I do as well at my business location. As of now we put out *one small bag* of trash about once a month for the trash man to take. One small bag! How much do you dump into the landfills weekly?

My goal: by the end of the year be able to cancel my trash service because we are not using it

What do you do to reduce your footprint on the earth?

-- Fin