Rituals of Refuse

I have conducted an informal recycling study of our home for some months now. I am surprised at the amount of waste our household produces. I am amazed at the high percentage of our waste that could be collected for recycling, but isn't collected. I am amazed that we citizens can put out all the garbage we want for landfills without giving it a second thought. I like the wholesome feeling of the challenge to divert all of our recyclables into the collection bins every week. I am surprised at how easy it is to recycle enough every week to really notice it in terms of having less in the garbage cans. Less garbage in the can means less garbage buried in the ground. Less buried in the ground is more put to good use again.

We receive a daily newspaper. A daily newspaper alone is a goodly pile every week. Paper waste seems to collect all over the house. Everywhere in the house the furniture was covered with paper. So I put small trash cans in every strategic location in the house: One by the front door table where the mail lands. Another in Becky's office downstairs which also serves the laundry room. Another in the downstairs bath, and there's the main trash can in the kitchen. The downstairs bedroom has a can and there are two waste cans in my office upstairs. There is one in the bath and one in our bedroom upstairs. There is also a large can in the basement for the basement and back yard waste. Finally there is a trash can on front porch. By my count that is eleven active trash receptacles. I could get all the recyclables if I went through all the cans and picked out the recyclables by hand. That's too much trouble, and there is no telling what someone may deposit in any of the cans. I don't like the idea of reaching my hand into any trash can, and I want to prevent anything recyclable from getting into a waste can in the first place.

People, including myself, will put a piece of waste paper on the kitchen counter before stepping on the trash can pedal to toss the paper in the can. Therefore collection of recyclables has to be easy or people won't keep it up. As man of the house I have learned to approach my duty of the weekly garbage collection patiently as a cleansing ritual. Thought and physical effort has to be expended every week to cleanse the house of it's refuse. There is no way around that. Trash collection in this house gets some of my attention every day of the week. This cannot be avoided without living in squalor. I have to do and think "X" amount every week, no matter what, to get out the trash. The question is how can I use this same time and effort to get every piece of recyclable into the recycle truck every week? I would willingly invest "X" number of minutes, extra, every day to create a program of super great efficiency.

I want to achieve full saturation reclamation in the total waste our house puts out for collection every week. I expect that this will take extra time and effort. I expect that once my system is implemented the system will work automatically and the collection cleansing ritual will require the same or less effort as our current system. This also includes keeping food waste out of the trash. I know the various materials in the form of refuse this house produces. I know where these materials are produced. Now I have to get all the paper into the paper bin and the plastics, glass, and metals into the other bin. I think that would comprise about %75 of our total refuse. About the only thing left is material that has food residue on it.