This article was posted in PlanetThoughts.
A San Francisco man has saved over a year of trash because he ran an experiment in consumption. For one year, 35-year old professional caterer Ari Derfel kept every tissue, receipt, food wrapper and plastic bottle inside bins located in his kitchen and living room apartment. Ari even organized the trash by type, so it could be “seen, felt and understood more clearly.”
What started out as dinner with three friends ended up with him collecting his trash in his kitchen closet. His original intention to get two 96-gallon bins from the local waste management company did not get through because “it was illegal to keep trash in bins and not have it removed regularly.”
So what has he learned from his project? In his own words:
- The vast vast vast majority of trash comes from food packaging.
- When I ask people to put prepared food in my own containers it disrupts their flow and makes them think.
- Saving trash leads to increased consciousness of what I consume.
- Recycling sucks.
- It doesn’t take much to make a big difference.
- Trash sucks.
- Changing is fun, much more fun than it is stressful.
- Cleaning out food packaging takes time and is necessary to get rid of odors and to ensure bugs and rodents are not attracted to it.
Ari is planning to start a second year to see if he could make less trash then he did the first year. He also hopes to attract some other people to do it with him, “perhaps make it a national competition for fun to see who can make the least amount of trash in a year”. On top of that, he also plans to film the second year and to make a fun, interesting, funny, informative documentary about it. So if you want to help out, now is the time.
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I really enjoy reading your blog, it always has great insight. But I am very frustrated with the fact that so few people are talking about presidential candidates and their thoughts on global warming. Now that it is down to just a few candidates I would think that this would be a bigger issue.
Live Earth just picked up this topic and put out an article ( http://www.liveearth.org/news.php ) live earth is also asking why the presidential candidates are not being solicited for their stance on the issue of the climate change. I just saw a poll on http://www.EarthLab.com that says people care a lot about what their next leader thinks of global warming. Does anyone know of another poll or other results about this subject?
Here is the page where I saw the EarthLab poll: http://www.earthlab.com/life.aspx. This is a pretty legit website; they are endorsed by Al Gore and the alliance for climate protection and they have a carbon footprint calculator. Does anyone have a strong opinion about this like I do? No matter what your political affiliation is or who you vote for this is an important issue for our environment, our economy and for homeland security.
You have to admire this guy’s commitment to the issue! But oh, the smell, the smell. Bet he did not have many dinner guest this past year! LOL!
If there are any bloggers here that want to lend their support to a petition to register blogging opposition to the current killing of whales, please read my latest post for the details and a link to the site starting the petition. He wants a thousand bloggers, I think we can get him more than that!
http://willtaft.com/environment/bloggers-unite-to-stop-whale-slaughter/
-Will