No-Trash Monday

I failed. It wasn't the coffee cup, or the soda, or the mail or anything close that got me. It was the tape dispenser.

This morning, I decided to try to live today without creating any trash. Everything, and I mean everything, I used today would find its way, eventually, to the recycling bin, save tissues and toilet paper, for which there are no acceptable alternatives. The goal was to reduce my negative environmental impact as much as possible, accepting as a given that I would need to allow for recycling - in New York City in 2007 2008, it is impossible to live a day without some plastic and paper. (Or, perhaps, not.)

I carried my iced-coffee cup seven blocks home from Starbucks to ensure it ended up in a recycling plant and not a dump. I carried a hodgepodge of items back from Target sans plastic bag. I recycled receipts, and printouts and letters.

But I'm moving. And moving means packing. And packing means tape. And tape comes in a dispenser. And the dispenser is connected to a sticky paper packaging. The glue on the packaging renders it non-recyclable.

Damn you Scotch.

It's not like the rest of the day's successes was without problems. I tried so hard to separate papers and plastics and food scraps. But, at the end of the day I'm left with a halogen lightbulb that needs disposing, as well as four AA batteries. They sit on my shelf, staring at me. Throw me away, they beg.

I can see this junk accumulating after a few weeks without a trash can. My closets will overflow with things I have used and cannot reuse, things which no longer have purpose in this world but which I cannot bring myself to let sit away eternity elsewhere.

What's an Earth-loving person to do?

I guess, I keep trying. I spread the gospel and get others to think about the waste that they're sending to a landfill to sit around for thousands upon thousands of years.

I may not have been waste-free today, but I was less wasteful than yesterday. And hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to say the same again.

Can you?

I hope so.

Comments

[mloeffler@gmail.com]

FYI, it's 2008.

[Brian]

Nice Try - if every person tried this hard all of the time we would have much less trash.

And by the way, batteries are very recyclable, and doing so keeps very toxic chemicals out of the ground and drinking water.

check out earth911's page for more information:
http://earth911.org/recycling/battery-recycling

[David]

In fact, Whole Foods takes batteries for recycling. My point is just that I now have a shelf full of stuff that I need to take to special places to get recycled. Woe is me.