Personal Trash Inventory

Before beginning my personal trash inventory I knew that as a member of an extraordinarily wasteful society, I would also be subject to the influence of a wasteful culture. I knew my lifestyle had its associated trash output, but it wasn’t an area of concern or even awareness prior to my week long trash inventory. I was as happy as a clam putting the blame on everyone else for the filling of landfills, despite my inner knowledge of my personal wastefulness. I assuaged any nagging fears about my negative impact on the environment by telling myself, that there are people that waste way more than I do, my contribution pales in comparison to this other unidentifiable group of horribly indulgent wasteful people I imagined to make me look like mother nature herself, I mean I have a composter for Pete’s sake, how wasteful can I be? (granted it is an empty composter).
My relative ignorance of my personal wastefulness is due to the fact that trash has become an almost unconscious aspect of my life, I don’t even have to walk five feet and I encounter a trash can on campus beckoning for my water bottle. In my dorm, I simply drop my trash down a chute and it magically disappears forever. My view of trash is so skewed, once an item is in the trash, that item almost doesn’t exist anymore. We throw things away, and consider them gone for good, but there is no real “away” for that trash to disappear to. My ignorance to my wasteful behavior can come down to the saying “out of sight out of mind”, my trash doesn’t stay in my tiny dorm room; it just disappears down the chute and out of my thoughts forever. At home the only time our trash is even really considered is Wednesday morning, abruptly awoken by the din of the trash collector, when someone sprints out to put the trash bins on our curb. God forbid if we were to forget and we would be stuck with our trash for another WEEK!? When in reality that week of trash in our side yard is a whole lot shorter than how long that trash will be on this earth sitting in a landfill. To say the least, my perspective has changed after seeing the sheer volume of my trash output during the completion of my trash inventory.
As to the content of my trash, I was blown away by how much paper products I use on a day to day basis. Paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, tissues, and papers for printing and assignments accounts for an extremely large percentage of my trash. I was also struck by how much of my waste from organic food waste, napkins, utensils, packaging, take out boxes and cups, was in some way related to food. The week in which I inventoried my trash was an extraordinarily busy one, so busy that I didn’t eat regular meals in the dining halls. I relied mainly upon take out from the quick services restaurants at UCLA, like Bruin Café, in comparison to eating at the dining hall where all I would throw away would be napkins and the odd uneaten piece of food, whereas at Bruin Cafe, I throw away a paper cup, lid, straw, takeout box, plastic bag, fork, and napkins. All in all, A LOT more trash than if I were to eat at the dining hall or prepare my own food. To reduce my waste of food related items, I am focusing on planning my meals so I don’t have to rely on Bruin Café and packaging heavy food items. I can also easily reduce my use of paper products, by using my cloth towel to dry my hands instead of the mass amounts of paper towels I used to use, and limit myself to only two napkins per meal, so as to prevent the mountain of crumpled up napkins that always somehow end up on my plate after dinner. I can also use my refillable water container instead of taking the wasteful route and relying on plastic bottles. These changes along with others are relatively simple and can greatly reduce my trash output.