What’s With All the Garbage?

There is one particular routine that occurs around the Urbaniak household every 8 days, or so: The city sends us a reminder email around suppertime. My wife and I discuss it then promptly forget about it. At bedtime we say, “Oh shoot – don’t forget that email!” And then comes the mad scramble running through the house, collecting all sorts of junk, packaging it, delivering it to the curb, and then hopefully finishing up with enough time to get a good night’s rest.

If you haven’t guessed already, I’m talking about taking out the garbage.

Today we’re going to dive into why garbage sucks and what you can practically do to reduce it. If our family of four consistently puts out only a single half-empty bag of garbage most weeks, you can surely do it too!

Why Garbage Sucks

Environment

The obvious reason garbage sucks is that it pollutes our environment. It’s so obvious I’m not going to even say much here. Sure, the garbage might be confined more or less to the landfill, but most of it never really goes away. It just gets buried. On the plus side, I guess we’re sustaining the seagull population and providing plenty of employment opportunities for future archaeologists.

Land Consumption

Landfills are huge. And they eventually fill up, perpetually necessitating the creation of more landfills. Yes, Canada is big, but that land could have been used for other productive means such as farming or industry, or just remain as a naturalized area. Some communities don’t even have room for their own trash any more. Toronto, for instance, ships its garbage hours down the highway because their landfills are all full. And that ties back into the environment, what with all of those garbage transport trucks polluting the air.

Money

But money is where I’d like to land just for a moment. I’m not talking about the money involved in disposing of your garbage, even though it’s certainly a big drain on our local tax dollars. I’m actually going to push backwards up the economic chain and tie your garbage into financial independence and quality of life.

You see, your garbage is just the stuff you buy or make that you don’t need anymore. That’s what we call waste. So if you are producing a lot of garbage, it’s probably an indication that you are spending a lot of cold hard cash on stuff you don’t need, or don’t need as much of.

When my wife and I were new parents, we were taught a simple yet effective trick to know if our infant son was actually eating or not: Watch what comes out the other end. If there is plenty coming out, then there is plenty going in. (Unless, of course, the poor kid is sick, in which case all bets are off.) This same thing holds for our household garbage. If there is a lot coming out of our household, then there’s even more going in. And for stuff to come into our household, we typically have to spend time or money to make it happen.

So if we reduce our garbage by reducing our consumption, we’ll spend less, increase our personal savings rate, require less for retirement because we’re spending less, and be able to enjoy the life of our choice sooner. And also help out the environment. Win-win, right?

Don’t believe me? Mr. Money Mustache himself, one of the gurus in the financial independence / early retirement blogosphere, is even a self-proclaimed environmentalist masquerading as a FIRE blog. I wish I could find the exact article where he claimed that, but alas I cannot. Read enough of his stuff, though, and you will no doubt agree.

How Can We Produce Less Garbage?

The answer to this question really is not rocket science, but even basic principles need reinforcement from time to time. So here we go…

Reduce, reuse, recycle and compost!

Reduce

As I mentioned above, we can reduce the amount of garbage by reducing our consumption of goods. So how do you reduce your consumption? Well, for one thing, just stop buying stuff. Seriously. Think about how much you really need that item, and pause on it for a day or a week or longer. Make a good decision on whether you really need it, or if you need that much of it. Just stop (or cut back). Choose products with less packaging. Buy in bulk instead of single-serve items and then use a Tupperware container to send it school with your kids.

Reuse

And check out that lead-in to “reuse”. Instead of buying Tupperware containers, reuse the containers from other products such as ice cream, peanut butter, and so on. In general, try to repurpose an item before throwing it out.

But remember, “reuse” isn’t just “I reuse”, it’s “we as a society reuse.” One man’s trash is another’s treasure. Kijiji, Craigslist and other online groups are perfect avenues for getting rid of stuff that you don’t need while diverting it from the landfill and maybe even making a couple of bucks. However, if it’s really icky, “free” goes a long way towards clearing out the garage quickly…

For example, just last month we sold an old beat up ottoman on Kijiji. At first we thought “who would want this, let alone pay $10?” But the nice lady who came wanted it for her dogs to lie on without wrecking her couch. When we replaced the backyard shed a couple of years ago, I posted it for free with the tongue-in-cheek offer that “I will even help you take it down.” Then I spent a subsequent afternoon with a very nice farmer disassembling my old shed so she could use it to store firewood. Again, win-win-win (that third win is for landfill diversion!)

Recycle

Recycling is probably the easiest for us, but also the least effective and the most costly for our tax system. Yet I am always surprised and disappointed when I am somewhere and cannot find a recycling bin. We are very fortunate in our city that we can throw pretty much any kind of paper or container into our household blue box. The list of accepted items just keeps getting longer and longer. Go London!

Compost

I guess technically this would fall under “reuse”, since we are reusing kitchen scraps in the garden. But it’s distinct enough that it deserves special mention.

Years ago we inherited a typical stand-up backyard composter. We put it at the back of the yard out of sight and haphazardly threw stuff in when we felt like trekking all the way out there. We most certainly did not use it much in the winter, and eventually stopped altogether.

A couple of years ago we decided to get serious about composting. We learned and planned it out in the context of other backyard upgrades on the docket. We decided to go with a really simple and effective double-barrel spinning composter from Costco. It was even stylish enough (or rather, inoffensive enough) that we placed it up near the house, only a few feet from the deck. Short walk + ease of use = Lots of use! After a couple of years, I can honestly say that we still use it consistently. We have a small container in the kitchen, and every couple of days or so we take a very short walk outside to empty it into the big composter.

Now here’s the magic:

Even though we’ve pretty regularly used one container of garbage most weeks for the last many years, I can honestly say that the moment we started using the composter in earnest, our garbage output dropped substantially. Now that bag at the curb is barely half or 3/4’s full! What a tremendous and marked difference composting has made in our personal garbage production.

And it wasn’t even hard.

Your Turn Now!

What magic will you use to reduce your garbage? Crank up the composting? Cut back on consumption? Lobby your community to accept more items through your local recycling program? What really obscure items have you flogged on Kijiji or Craiglist?