I was intrigued to read in the latest online Time magazine that David Chameides, an award winning cameraman has not thrown out his garbage this year. An average American throws out 1,700 lbs of rubbish last year.Dave stacks all of his non-recyclable trash — including organic waste like food neatly in the basement of his Los Angeles house. He uses a tin box to hold bags of waste paper, and lines the staircase of his basement with used bottles. For organic waste, he put in a worm composter that breaks down leftover food.
Not only does Chameides carefully pack away any waste he creates at home, he also lugs back trash he may have produced outside the home. On a recent vacation to Mexico, Chameides tagged and bagged all the things he would have thrown out, and brought them back with him to the United States. Security officials at the airport in Mexico were understandably confused. "The woman in the security line opened up my bag and saw all the trash," says Chameides. "She said, 'Que esto?' [What is this?] I told her, 'Basura' — garbage. They just laughed and zipped up the bag." What a weirdo!
To reduce the amount of trash he wasn't throwing, Dave Chameides simply cut back on the amount of stuff he consumed in the first place. Given that his nickname is Sustainable Dave, that wasn't too hard. "I'm a non-consumer to begin with," says Chameides. Through about eight months, Chameides kept a little more than 30 lbs. of trash — most of which dates back to the first couple months of the year.The average American, by contrast, would have passed 1,000 lbs by now. "It turned out that it's not that hard," he says. "I'm a pretty normal guy — I just keep my garbage in my basement."
It's easy to mock Chameides's earnest habits, but his quest does highlight an environmental threat that rarely gets attention. Most Americans believe that littering on the street is wrong but throwing something out in a proper trashcan doesn't mean it simply disappears. Taking out the trash is increasingly costly, with major cities like New York now having to truck their garbage hundreds of miles to reach an open dumping space. That means energy and carbon emissions. After visiting his community's landfill, Chameides decided to begin his year of no trash."It's nearly 40 miles away, and they have 13,000 tons of trash coming in every day," he says. "It's going to close in seven years, and then they'll have to ship the trash elsewhere"
Chameides shows that what we really need to do is simply slow down and think about the waste we're creating, and the easy ways to reduce it, before we end up knee deep in our own garbage. "People ask me, 'Why are you doing this?'" he says. "It's because I want to know more about what my waste footprint is. I don't want to be part of the problem, but part of the solution." That's a sentiment that even average Americans should be able to agree with.
In Malaysia too, there are people who do not throw their trash. They keep unused things in the store for years not because they are afraid to fill the landfills but they think they will use the things they store later.I am also guilty of keeping all sorts of things, only to throw them out years later.Although I recycle what is recyclable and buries my kitchen wastes in the garden, I become sentimental when it comes to books and the children's toys. I must remember to donate all the unused clothes, books and toys. So pending that, the house is cluttered with the all these unused items.
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