the audit - part one

I’ll start with our 460 pounds of trash per month. Are you kidding?? Immediately I start to rationalize…well, we don’t always pick and throw out garlic mustard weed. There won’t always be a broken toy. We don’t throw out batteries each week. Hmmm, this sounds an awful lot like working through our family budget. We don’t always go out to eat. The car doesn’t need repairs every month. But just like the budget, I bet there’s always something to jack up those numbers!

We had a jolly time picking through, sorting, and weighing a week’s worth of Krug garbage. I’d not done this since I accidentally left my retainer on a restaurant table in the eighth grade! Rancid. And the biggest heartbreaker for me? That would be the four pounds of food we toss PER DAY! Yes. Again, I can rationalize: I don’t always forget about a full bag of potatoes. We don’t always shame an entire meal because of a royal recipe disaster. But the numbers don’t lie, and truthfully, I knew going into this that we were a food wasting family. Shame, there goes another head of lettuce. That’s money in the trash. And then there’s the ugly feeling that hangs out with over-consumption. I’m so blessed, and yet I waste so much!

Yard waste rang in with the largest number, averaging nearly 5 pounds per day. Honestly, though, would we keep that up all year? I think not. We chip or burn our yard waste. That being said, I hardly think that burning the yard waste would be considered recycling.

Finally, I wasn’t pleased with looking in the mirror and finding laziness. I like to pat myself on the back for filling our little, blue recycling bin each week, but in going through our trash we had an eye-opening moment. All the laundry bottles, soda bottles, and cans used in the basement just ended up forgotten in the basement trash. We were too lazy to run the stuff upstairs, so we tossed it in the trash, and promptly (and happily) forgot all about it.

You don’t get to forget when you pick through your trash.



*note: thanks to Alyssa, our photographer at this event!
*and for those who checked before, yes, it is 460 lbs a month!! originally I'd looked at the wrong page of my audit sheet..what a disappointment!