The Garbage Experiment

We've started a new project. Cristy wants me to tell you about it. I don't want to tell you about it because I'm embarrassed. But she is making me because it was my idea.

Here it is: For a period of one year, beginning on July 1, 2011, we are not throwing out or recycling our household trash. Instead we reuse, sell or give it away. We call it The Garbage Experiment. We are nearly two months into it.

The idea comes from thinking about what would happen if I was forced to use every piece of trash, every piece of paper, plastic, metal and cardboard in art projects. Would I be able to keep up with the influx of garbage? What would I do with so many beer bottles? Could I keep it up for a month? A year?

I shared my idea with Cristy and to my astonishment and horror she was interested. In fact she was enthusiastic and came up with a parcel of good ideas for ways to reuse and reduce the garbage. Apparently we were going to do this.

So we devised a set of rules to govern the experiment. Here they are.

1. All post-consumer waste, with some exceptions, must be reused, sold or given away.

   Every bottle, every plastic container, every piece of junk mail, every pair of old ragged jeans must be reused or transformed into something salable or at least give-away-able. The primary example here is the paper mache stuff that I do.

2. No curbside recycling.

   No more leaving stuff on the street or taking it to a recycling dropoff. Giving old clothes or non-trash stuff to charities is OK.

3. Collecting is allowed, hoarding is not.

   An example of collecting would be to make a pile of the magazines you have subscriptions to until you don't have room for them anymore, then you give them to a friend. An example of hoarding would be to collect the magazines in giant piles that you have to walk around to get to the couch.

4. Anything contaminated or dangerous is disposed of in the usual way.

   Examples: Cat litter, broken glass, band-aids, batteries. Use your imagination.

5. Keep the house tidy.

   Neither of us want a lifestyle where we have washed plastic bags draped over every surface to dry. If a plastic bag is clean, it is reusable. If it is dirty, it is considered contaminated and goes in the trash.

So how is it going, two months in? All in all it hasn't really been that bad. I spend more time cutting up paper and cardboard. My paper mache output has increased by about 500%. Cristy has a plastic bag re-using strategy that seems to be working and she makes more packaging-based shopping decisions. And the house is tidy.