Day 1

What an interesting day. I made more trash than I thought I was going to, largely due to poor planning. I had a weird day, which led to me eating-out twice.

The day began with a job interview, and I took along a poster-board prop for the presentation-- which I would normally throw away, but I'm going to compost it. After the job interview, I grabbed a quick bite to eat at Quizno's before my sister's play performance at the Hipp.

From Quizno's I ended up taking home one styrofoam cup, one no.6 plastic container that held my salad, one no.6 plastic container that held my salad dressing, one straw, one paper straw-wrapper, one paper sub-wrapper, two paper napkins, one paper reciept, one plastic fork, and one plastic knife (and boy did it smell bad by the time I got home 10 hours later!). But there's more: as I was watching the frat-boy make my sub, I saw him cut off a heel of bread and toss it to the side.

"Where did you put that bread?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"Did you just throw that bread away?"

(Looking scared). "Um, uh, why do you care?"

"I'm doing an experiment where I'm trying not to make any trash for a month. I need to know what you just did with that hunk of bread."

"Um, yeah, uh, we throw it away. I mean, we tried giving it to the homeless shelter, but they didn't want it."

(Somewhat sarcastically.) "I guess nobody lives on crusts of bread and water anymore. That was only in medeival times." (I mean really, what is the homeless shelter going to do with 1,000 heels of bread 365 days a year? For God's sake, let them eat cake!)

To Quizno's credit, they did tell me that if I brought my own plate they would make me a sub without wrapping it in paper, and that I could fill up my own water container at the dispenser.

At the play, I recieved a playbill. And then someone gave me a paper copy of a local zine.

I took Quinn shopping and wasn't paying attention. When I bought a book at Border's, I forgot to tell them not to use a bag. I also recieved a paper receipt.

From dinner I brought home a paper straw wrapper, a plastic straw, two paper napkins, and two paper kid's menus. However, I did not bring home the food we did not eat, nor the paper that lined the breadbasket. This ended up in the restaurant's trash. Why didn't I bring it home? Because I forgot to stop the waitress from clearing it.

Later, at home, Issac banged his head and got a bloody nose. I forgot to reach for a linen napkin, and instead used two paper towels.

I'm not going to mention the packaging that was included in the stereo and CDs that Quinn bought, because it wasn't mine. Although I do feel part ownership, because I was there and witnessed it. You can imagine it was considerable.

Initial trash: 27 items (one posterboard, four napkins, two straw-wrappers, two straws, one playbill, one magazine, one sandwhich wrapper, two plastic no.6 food containers, one styro cup, one fork, one knife, two reciepts, one plastic bag, two paper menus, one sheet of waxpaper, assorted food scraps, a heel of bread, two paper towels.)

Compostable: 16 items.

Recylable: 2 items.

Real Trash: 9 items.