Consumption

[dorian gray]

Anyone try to keep track of how much shit they consume? I'm constantly amazed at how much trash our family generates....and we're envrionmentally conscientious. We recycle* a huge percentage of our refuse but it still sucks that you can't even eat without generating waste that weighs more than the food itself.



*place recycleables in a recycling bin; I have no idea if anyone actually recycles it.


btw, I have a friend who puts ALL his trash in the recycling bin. He claims "they have to sort through it anyway, so why not just put everything in it?"

 

[dorian gray]

Never mind.

 

[lurch70]

was just thinking about this 10 minutes ago. me and the wife generated a huge bag of trash in about 12 hours + a box of recyclables.
we are behemoths however that eat a lot ... what's your excuse?

 

[Hell Mike]

How do you ameripeople recycle and stuff?

In Sweden, it goes like this:

General plain ole GARBAGE gets taxed, you pay based on weight.
In order to have less garbage, you can separate these and leave at municipal waste stations, sorted and ready (pardon my possibly crappy translations):

Paper (Newspapers and shit)
Cardboard (Boxes stuff comes in and shit)
Hard plastics (non-Pantable* PET bottles and shit)
Soft plastics (Plastic bags and shit)
Clear glass (Jam jars and shit)
Coloured glass (Beer bottles and shit
Metal (Tin cans and shit, not music records)
Batteries (Batteries and shit)
Electronics (TVs and shit)

I think that's all. The rest generally gets burnt, and many have their own compost shitz.

For larger shitz (Furniture, old bikes, random big crap) we have larger recycling stations divided into more precise material-based stations.
Shit then gets taken care of in the most appropriate way, the general Garbage gets incinerated and the heat goes to warm houses.

 

[einride]

General plain ole GARBAGE gets taxed, you pay based on weight.

huh

 

[Hell Mike]

huh

If you rent, your landlord pays; your part is included in your rent

 

[dorian gray]

was just thinking about this 10 minutes ago. me and the wife generated a huge bag of trash in about 12 hours + a box of recyclables.
we are behemoths however that eat a lot ... what's your excuse?

there's four of us?

 

[Thanatopsis123]

Here in Arkansas you have to buy a city trash bin to have your trash picked up. You pay for the size you want. Then, if you have more trash than will fit, you have to buy special stickers to put on your extra bags of garbage. You also buy a recycle bin to put glass, paper, and plastic in. You don't have to recycle but if you do, you'll pay less for the trash bin and stickers.

 

[dorian gray]

Our shitz is paid for through real estate taxes. But those are based on the amount your house is worth. America is too backwards to do something as radical as paying for refuse collection based on weight.
Some people outside the service boundary have to pay extra taxes but it's still not based on weight. You could put a boat out by the curb and probably not pay any extra.

 

[einride]

If you rent, your landlord pays; your part is included in your rent

fair enough but it's not like i as an individual have to care about how much shit i throw away because my entire house just has a big ass bin

 

[dorian gray]

Here in Arkansas you have to buy a city trash bin to have your trash picked up. You pay for the size you want. Then, if you have more trash than will fit, you have to buy special stickers to put on your extra bags of garbage. You also buy a recycle bin to put glass, paper, and plastic in. You don't have to recycle but if you do, you'll pay less for the trash bin and stickers.

That's pretty cool.
The thing that concerns me overall is not so much the trash we generate but that society as a whole accepts a paradigm that produces as much waste as physically possible. Eating fast food creates far more paper waste (in volume) than the actual food.

 

[Conspicuously Absent]

Here in Arkansas you have to buy a city trash bin to have your trash picked up. You pay for the size you want. Then, if you have more trash than will fit, you have to buy special stickers to put on your extra bags of garbage. You also buy a recycle bin to put glass, paper, and plastic in. You don't have to recycle but if you do, you'll pay less for the trash bin and stickers.

Its the same way in vancouver. Except the recycling stuff is free.

How do you ameripeople recycle and stuff?

We rent so I can only comment on how it works here. Its all covered in rent. We sort it into the following types:

- Plastic/Metal (recyclable, seperated with magnets or poor people or something).
- paper - all types
- Organic
- clear glass
- coloured glass
- everything else


Most garbage gets incinerated for power and heating.



edit: oh yeah: big shit you take to one of several garbage facilities where it gets seperated, everything else is by the apartment building. And locked up to keep hobos from dumpster diving.

You could put a boat out by the curb and probably not pay any extra.

 

[Hell Mike]

fair enough but it's not like i as an individual have to care about how much shit i throw away because my entire house just has a big ass bin

That's the beauty of renting, you don't have to care about shit.
Just one big ass bin for everything? Highly unorthodox in modern Suécia!

edit: If you just have one great big bin, you're supposed to drag your behind to the closest recycling station for everything that's recyclable.

 

[einride]

That's the beauty of renting, you don't have to care about shit.
Just one big ass bin for everything? Highly unorthodox in modern Suécia!

edit: If you just have one great big bin, you're supposed to drag your behind to the closest recycling station for everything that's recyclable.

i know that

i recycle most glass and some paper/cardboard

the point is you make it sound like people have to pay per kg of non-recyclable waste they generate but for 90% of everyone you just toss it and forget it

civilization, it's a grand thing

 

[dorian gray]

Green glass is not recycleable for some reason.

 

[einride]

Green glass is not recycleable for some reason.

in civilized countries we have separate containers for green and white glass

 

[EricT]

In Utah you have one can, you toss shit in there by Monday morning and then you spend the next 5 hours wondering where it went...

 

[dorian gray]

in civilized countries we have separate containers for green and white glass

White glass?

 

[einride]

White glass?

i know you would comment on that

green glass goes in the green container so what do you reckon the white one is for

 

[Hell Mike]

i know you would comment on that

green glass goes in the green container so what do you reckon the white one is for

brown glass also goes in the green container how do you explain that