All My Trash for 2020
I’ve been saving my trash in a “plastic audit” since October of 2019. I live a generally plastic-free lifestyle but I’m not 100% plastic-free…yet. So, to see where the last 1% of my trash was coming from, I started keeping track of all of it.
This is just my trash not my whole family’s (although they don’t generate too much more than this). My husband is not as stringent on plastic as I am, so he buys a weekly tub of yogurt and occasionally some bacon. But again, my husband and kids don’t generate too much more trash than me.
Finally, the city I live in provides compost and recycling along with trash pick-up. Now, given the state of recycling, I only recycle metal, glass, and paper. This generally includes an occasional tuna can, glass jars with metal lids, and junk mail. But even so, I try to reduce the amount of cans, glass, and paper I recycle.
So, now that we’ve covered the ground rules, let’s dive in! Here’s all my trash for 2020!
When we break the items down into categories, it becomes clear that the majority of my plastic waste comes from food. And the second biggest category is packaging from online orders.
Also, while it’s less clear in pictures, I see that many of my purchases have been affected by COVID.
Meat
- 13 pieces of butcher paper
- 9 plastic bags
Before COVID changed the way we shopped, I was able to get meat in my own containers at the butcher. I’d simply bring whatever lightweight container I had and asked them to put my weekly amount in the container.
After COVID hit, the grocery stores stopped allowing me to do this. So, I would get the largest amount of meat allowed in one purchase. This would normally be about 4 to 5 pounds of chicken. I would use one pound during the week and freeze the rest.
Something I may have not mentioned in the past, is that these sheets of butcher paper come with a plastic bag inside. I usually get raw chicken and don’t want to keep the gross bag, so I toss the bag and hang onto the butcher paper to account for the bag. Also, butcher paper is oftentimes lined with plastic, so I count it in my audit. The green sheets of butcher paper are from Whole Foods where I get meat. The white sheets are from a local grocery store where I get deli type meats. When I get deli meats it just comes wrapped in butcher paper and no plastic bag.
Deli Meat & Cheese
- 12 deli bags
- 14 plastic wraps from wedges of cheese
Before COVID, I would bring my beeswax wraps to the deli and order a block of cheese. I would ask the clerk to wrap the block in the beeswax wrap I brought. It was glorious!
After COVID hit, I had to accept the plastic bag. This forced me to be more strategic about my cheese purchases. So, I ended up buying larger quantities similar to my meat purchases.
This also forced me to reconsider how much cheese I was using. I make mac and cheese for lunch for my kids on Saturdays. I used to make a creamy cheese sauce with close to 1 cup of shredded cheese. Now, I just sprinkle a little bit of cheese on top of some buttered noodles. They still gobble it down and I use less cheese!
Along with continually reducing my plastic waste, I’m constantly trying to find ways to live a little lighter. I know cheese, dairy, and meat have a high carbon footprint, so I try to reduce the amount that we use.
Milk & Cream
- 73 milk caps
- 5 heavy cream caps
At the beginning of 2020, my youngest was still drinking milk from a bottle but by the middle of the year, she had stopped. At the same time my husband had stopped eating cereal for breakfast so we stopped having a need for milk!
Each red milk cap is from a half gallon glass bottle. So, over the course of the year we had 36.5 gallons of milk. Although we will have a lot less milk in 2021, we’ll probably buy an occasional bottle to make mashed potatoes and for the Oreos my husband buys once in a blue moon.
Fruits & Vegetables
- 41 vegetable tags
- 9 bags of frozen vegetables
- 100+ produce stickers
Again with COVID. Our farmer’s market was closed for a number of months, so I accumulated a lot more tags from items like broccoli, kale, and Swiss chard.
Also, I used to use more frozen green peas because when my youngest was still learning to eat solid foods. Peas were one of the few vegetables she could eat. Now, I’ve stopped buying frozen vegetables but there’s still alone bag or two in my freezer for emergencies.
Oils & Condiments
- 15 bottle caps
- 20 seals around the cap
- 5 pull tabs
- 3 quality seals
With the exception of Sriracha, I stopped buying nearly all liquids in plastic bottles and only buy them in glass bottles. This included sauces, condiments, oils, vinegars, fish sauce, hot sauce, and etc.
Over the course of the year, just like with everything else, I tried to see what I could eliminate. I ended up eliminating all pre-made salad dressings. Now, I make my own with oil and vinegar.
In addition, while I could recycle the glass bottles and the caps and seals are minimal, I started ordering basic liquids from an online zero waste store called the Wally Shop. I talk more about my experience buying from them in this post.
The Wally Shop sends bulk goods in containers that come in a big fabric tote. When I get the tote, I dump all the goods into my own glass jars and return the tote to my local UPS store. It’s super easy and I love getting my products with no waste!
So, I’ve started ordering olive oil, vinegar, soy sauce and other pantry staple liquids to avoid the extra waste. Now, if they only carried Sriracha!
Snacks & Other Food Items
- 1 frozen burrito wrapper
- 8 candy wrappers
- 2 rice krispy treat wrappers
- 2 bags of Hershey’s kisses
- 1 chip bag
- 1 bread bag
- 4 packets of yeast
- 4 labels from glass yogurt jars
- 5 packets of cheese powder from mac & cheese
Lots of fun items here! First, no, this isn’t all the candy I eat. I usually buy chocolate bars that are wrapped in paper and foil. I recycle the paper and crumple up several layers of foil to make a large ball before putting it into recycling. When bulk bins were still available, I’d get gummy fruit snacks and dark chocolate peanut butter cups. They were so delicious!
Before making homemade mac and cheese, I used to make boxed mac and cheese. Somewhere along the way, I decided to make my own and haven’t bought any since.
I used to get fresh loaves of sliced wheat bread from Panera. I’d bring my own bread bag and they’d put the loaf in the bag for me.
Now, I stick to loaves of sourdough French bread I can buy in paper sleeves. There are still occasional loaves of sliced bread in plastic bags that my husband buys, but I don’t eat it. For the sake of my marriage, I don’t count what my husband buys and he’s free to buy what he wants. 😛
Finally, just like so many others, during quarantine I baked A LOT–which meant a lot of yeast! After a while, I found that I could find yeast in glass jars with metal lids!
Coffee & Tea
- 3 one-pound bags of loose leaf tea
- 1 one-pound bag of coffee beans
- 1 five-pound bag of coffee beans
I used to buy coffee beans and tea leaves in the bulk section or from my local tea shop, but same story. When COVID hit, all my local bulk options went away. So, I reverted back to buying bulk quantities of coffee and tea online.
Online Order Packaging
- 5 bubble mailers
- 16 mailer bags
- 12 product bags
- miscellaneous plastic packages
Like most people, I bought a lot online in 2020. Since I was trying to avoid the stores and I bought clothes from online consignment, this mean a lot of packaging.
After seeing all the packaging from the first few months, I started limiting my online purchases to just once a month to bundle everything together. But overall, for 2021, I just want to buy less stuff in general. You can’t have packaging if you don’t buy anything, right?
Contacts & Packaging
Contacts and their blister packs are something that haven’t appeared in my monthly audits. Let me explain. A few years ago, my best friend mentioned that Bausch + Lomb offers a contact lens and blister pack recycling program.
Being a soft contact lens wearer, I was stoked. So, each month or so when I’d change out a new pair, I kept the items to be recycled in a small container under my bathroom sink. It wasn’t until doing my yearly trash audit that it occurred to me that I should be including these in my trash. As mentioned at the top, given the state of recycling, I only recycle glass, metal, and paper which is much more likely to be recycled.
I know there are programs where you can pay to recycle various plastic items, but that, for me, defeats the purpose. My trash audits are supposed to motivate me to get rid of the remaining items. In this case, thanks to COVID, I’ve barely worn my contacts and am considering wearing my glasses more often until I finally get LASIK.
Miscellaneous
- Sriracha bottle
- daily calendar stand
- toner bottle
- 2 liquid soap refill pouches
- Wendy’s cup and lid
- Nyx makeup pouches
- Panera gift card
- card stick from flower arrangement
- two bandages from getting blood drawn
- Command strips
- seal from bottle of fish sauce
- seal and lid from paper breadcrumb jar
- other bits of random plastic
The miscellaneous pile has a random assortment of items. Some of the items like the daily calendar stand and the toner bottle won’t show up next year. These are items I used up and will not purchase again. Others, like the Sriracha bottle, I have yet to find a good replacement for.
As a quick note, I used to include wine corks in these audits, since there are many brands of wine that now use corks made from plastic instead of corks made from cork trees. However, after one of my posts, a coworker mentioned to me that she creates art out of corks, so I’ve been saving the corks for her collection.
Lessons & Takeaways
Overall, I’m stoked that all my trash for 2020 fits into a reusable Trader Joe’s bag! I learned so much from my trash audits–which was the point–so I feel it was successful!
One of the biggest things that became obvious to me was that COVID threw a wrench into my trash audit. Having my local bulk bins, deli, and butcher no longer accept containers resulted in a lot of trash. Also, having my farmer’s market closed was a bummer. This made me appreciate these options and how lucky I was to have them in the first place.
On the bright side, COVID forced me to be resourceful. I discovered the Wally Shop and cut down the amount of meat and cheese we ate as a family.
Collecting my trash for a year taught me to be resourceful and to do with less. Each item that I used and needed to throw away pushed me to find a non-plastic solution. For items that didn’t have a non-plastic solution, it made me reconsider if we needed it or if I could use less.
Along the way, in the effort to use less plastic, my lifestyle has become simpler and less carbon intensive. By continually striving to create less waste, I feel lighter, save money, and most importantly feel happier!
What do you think? Are you interested in doing a trash audit? Maybe a whole year seems daunting, but how about a month, a week, or even a day?
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