so i have this idea. probably another of my far fetched need to slow down and let reality catch up ideas. i am trying to take the house to zero waste

no easy task in a town where the existance of the worlds largest (last i checked there might be a bigger one in india now) incinerator is



the city as part of the original construction contract banned curbside recycling. THANKS COLEMAN YOUNG. so it has been a giant pain in the ass to recycle here for the last 30 years. there is now a private drop off center that handles just about everything.

so recycling sorting is coming tot this house soon. so is a worm bin and some chickens. we already have those reusable cloth shopping bags. so now i guess it is a matter of buying shit with less packaging. i am aiming for nothing in the trash by january 2011. any other strategies?

oh just for an idea of how big that damned smokestack is. we live about 2 miles away from it and on most days it is visible from the front yard.

volume experiment in progress. 9 grocery bags lined up to collect recyclables. once i know how much stuff we can actualy recycle i will be building a container that will hold the opther container so i will not have to sort at the drop off point. i am thinking a box with 7 or 8 smaller boxes in it. gotta wait till i know how big it needs to be tho

shop around n you can find different centers to accept different recyclable materials

i try to buy things that have as little plastic as possible. pretty hard these days though.

found a few extra benifits to the drop off recycling center.
1 they approve of dumpster diving. (no more chasing wine bottles all over the tri county area) now if i can just figure out the best capping method for bum jugs
2 you meet some really weird fuckers in there.
3 no need to sort before ya go just walk around and toss shit into the bins

down to taking the trash can (oversized as it is) to the curb once a month. from looking down the street on trash day we are the only ones around here to get this far yet. and that includes the random shit that i keep finding left by the old owners and the litter that corner lots tend to get stuck with

We have a great recycling system going here. Four fifths of what we used to trash gets recycled now.

Living on a septic system we can't have a garbage disposal and some stuff just can't be recycled.

We recycle all we can and compost all possible but I still have to toss about a cubic foot a week into the hopper which goes to the incinerator.

figures that the city that put the world in cars would be a bit behind in trying to figure a way to unfuck the world