One Man's Mission: Not Throwing Any Trash 'Away' For 365 Days
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 09.25.08
365 Days of Trash
David Chameides is an Emmy winning cameraman (you can see the shows he has worked on at IMDB), but he's also a man on a mission. On his blog, 365 Days of Trash, he has been documenting his special year. Why special? Because he decided not to take out the trash anymore.
Read on for more about Dave's experiment.
There is No 'Away'
The average American throws out around 1,700 lbs. of trash annually. The best way to really truly understand what that means is to keep it all. It's probably also the best way to convince yourself to consume less stuff.
So Where Does the Stuff Go?
He keeps it all in his basement. All of it. Each days he makes a tally, which can be found on his blog, and he determines what would happen to it (recycling, landfill, etc), before then storing it in the appropriate place in his basement.
What About Food Scraps? Doesn't it Stink?
Dave has a worm composter for the food leftovers. He made a video about it (you can see the basement a little):
How's he Doing?
Time Magazine:
It didn't take long for Chameides to figure out that the best way to reduce the amount of trash he wasn't throwing away was to simply cut back on the amount of stuff he consumed in the first place. Given that his nickname is Sustainable Dave, that wasn't too hard. "I'm a non-consumer to begin with," says Chameides. "After a month or two I became aware of just how little I was consuming." Through about eight months, Chameides reckons he's kept a little more than 30 lbs. of trash — most of which dates back to the first couple months of the year, before he got the hang of not taking out the trash. The average American, by contrast, would have passed 1,000 lbs by now.
We wish Dave the best of luck with the rest of the year! It's a great experiment to raise people's consciousness to all that we're throwing 'away'.
Trash, Garbage, Landfills, Etc
Freeganism: The Art of Dumpster Diving
A Year Of Trash Is...96 Cubic Feet of Packaging
Landfill Mining, the Next Boom Industry?
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That's pretty cool.
Ever since we started composting, we've thrown out MUCH less trash by weight. we also recently got bigger recycling bins, and I think it has an impact on how much stuff we recycle somehow. Probably psychological.
365 days?...big deal. Most of us have 30 years of trash stored in our garage. ;)
Good idea though, and pretty easy to do. Since our waste collector has now limited each household to ONE bag a week...I barely get that now. You just start thinking about it before you buy, and it is now just second nature.
I'm thinking of starting some kind of compost system (live in a cold climate so may be in basement) so enjoying seeing posts like the above. However, I'm curious when people use newspaper and junk mail since I've heard from several sources that newpaper ink is toxic, and the colored inks and perhaps varnishes used on shiny things have heavy metals. Not something I would think one would want in one's garden. Anyone know if this is a real concern? In the meantime I would only use unprinted paper and perhaps wood products like sawdust - if I know where it comes from.
Right on. Thanks for the nod Treehugger, glad you found this of interest. My personal philosophy is that no one can do everything but everyone can do something and generally speaking we can all do more than what they are doing (myself included). Stay tuned for Jan 1 when the new sustainable.org launches. It's gonna be wild!
Consume Less, Conserve More!
Dave
Newspapers all use vegetable inks, and I'm pretty sure glossy stuff is generally some sort of clay. In fact here's a good link: http://mailman.cloudnet.com/pipermail/compost/2000-November/007651.html
The worst thing is newspapers. My mom and dad get two papers per day, and I swear that a year's worth would fill a phone booth.
Dave, we can all learn from your example.
I try to limit my trash (and have a collection of unrecyclable plastic to prove it) but recognize how difficult this can be for many people.
Good for you for pulling off a virtually waste-less lifestyle.
Brennan,
I have a feeling a year's worth of two papers would be close to filling up an average classroom than a phone booth. Especially if the papers come with 4 or 5 sections like the one we get does. Maybe you could do some calculations to show them how much paper they are using in a year.
There are always alternatives like sharing papers with your workmates or neighbours or reading news online.