For my first post I thought I would start with what produces a significant amount of garbage, which is acquisition and consumption. With that said, I figured what better place to start than my own house. Thus, both of the following pictures were taken at my house just a couple days ago in February 2011. The first shows the result of my parent’s typical grocery shopping trip. It looks like a lot and it is, however I have an unusually large household and it gets used up relatively quickly. Although a lot could potentially be thrown away in the end, the second picture shows that most of what is there, including bags, bottles, cans, boxes, etc., is made of recyclable material. Therefore, we try to significantly reduce our contribution to the growing garbage problem by taking the time to recycle these items so they can be made into something else and reused rather than poured into the landfill. Hopefully by doing this we each produce less garbage than the average, which is around 4 pounds per person per day.
One thing that struck me was the shear number of plastic bags in your photos. Just as a suggestion to get you started on your "Less Garbage quest" maybe try to use or switch to reusable shopping bags. You may already be doing this or preparing to. But I think that they are much more convenient and carry more without the possibility of breaking (Another plus is less trips to the car when unloading).
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