Being with your own filth.

I suspect simply embarking on this experiment will produce an immediate decline in the waste I produce.

I’ve had it with consumerism, yet I’m neck deep in it. I’ve had it with plastic bottles, wrappers, packaging, waste. It pisses me off. It’s unnecessary. It bugs me. A lot. And it’s done so for a long time. I’ve been noticing again. From Sara’s glass jar that she takes to the smoothie place to get filled instead of a Styrofoam one, to the bag I saw on set today, I’m noticing what these things are saying.

Hilarious. And true.

I’ve got like 4 of those kinds of canvas bags around here and can’t recall one time I thought to take one with me to the store. Perhaps if mine said what this one does… (To be fair, most of the time I put my groceries in my backpack, which was full today when i went shopping. But still.)

I feel like a raging tool every time I take my garbage out and sort all the recyclables, and see how much stuff I’m still generating. As it should be. I’ve supposed that because i dont bag each piece of my produce in 17 different bags I’m like, better than people who do or something – meanwhile each cup of tea I drink has a wrapper associated, every smoothie I drink has a cup I toss, I have vitamin water bottles all over the place, I buy stuff in boxes and wrappers all the time…

Thankfully though, I don’t think about it often – perhaps once a week when I take out my trash, sometimes 2 weeks if I’m really conscious and careful. But maybe I shouldn’t be thanking myself for that. Maybe I should be embracing my wastefulness full hilt and welcoming what a hypocrite I am.

In a rush to get to work and need something quick, someone else bought it for me, I’ll reuse it a couple times – All things I say to rationalize the bottles, wrappers, plastic bowls and other random shit I throw away on a regular basis. Recycling is still close enough to garbage to urk me. It’s an energy and resource suck that I initiate with my thoughtlessness and being lazy, that just doesn’t need to happen.

I’ve decided to live with all of my trash (sans yard waste, which we already compost and reuse), for two months — 2 weeks longer than it takes to form a habit. The effort is to document the process, and in the end, form better consumer habits based on the experience. I’m focusing mainly on things like vitamin water bottles and single serving packaging, grocery bags and other such things.

I want to see how much of this stuff I really contribute to our world. I just went and fished all packaging I could find here from the last week or so out of the trash and collected the various bottles from around my room.

I kept a few things I know are older to balance out the stuff I know I don’t have, like some clifbar wrappers and at least one paper to-go carton from my Pink Door gig last Sunday. I’m calling my official start date Sept 1. From now until Nov 1, the day before my 30th birthday, I will pack-out all of my consumer packaging waste and bring it home with me. If you’re someone who’s chosen a lifestyle that includes creative ways to be conscious of waste, I’d love to hear your advice.

Week 1 - sans the 4 plastic bags I forgot to put in the photo.

Looking at the word brought an acronym to mind – Why Always Soil The Environment? I hereby dub thee, the W.A.S.T.E. project.