Exercise 1 (Week 1): Personal Trash Inventory Instructions

For this exercise, you will keep track of everything you throw away over the course of a typical school week. There are three stages to this exercise so please read CAREFULLY.

1. Take inventory
While following your usual habits and routines-that is don't try to change what you do, at least not yet- take inventory of everything you throw away or recycle (if you normally recycle). Carry a small notebook wherever you go and jot down a description of every item you throw away or recycle for each day.

2. Organize a tally
Once you have a raw inventory, sort it into larger categories like "plastic bottles" and "paper items" and decide how you want to present a total tally. Then, enter this information into a spread sheet and email it to me.
Your record should be organized by date and the types of items you throw away. It should also include grand totals for the entire week. Details and embarrassing or confidential information need not be conveyed to me nor to the class; however, during the initial recording stage, do keep detailed descriptions to aid you in your organization of the data. For example, we don't want to hear about "36 squares of toilet paper at 8 AM" though you should write that in your notebook. Instead try to come up with larger categories of materials that include particular items and ways of quantifying them. You might estimate quantities in number or area. So, instead of "1 dirty tissue" or "1 empty Coke bottle" you might create the categories "Sq. footage of paper items" and "#'s of small/med/or large plastic containers" then do the math. You won't know exactly how your spread sheet should look until you have completed part 1 above.

3. Blog it
In a blog entry titled "Personal Trash Inventory", reflect on and answer the following questions as best you can:

1. Do you think you throw out a lot of trash? Did you consider yourself wasteful before this exercise? What about after?
2. If you can identify an area of particular wastefulness, what is it and how can you reduce your waste in that area?
3. What aspects of your current lifestyle are reflected in your trash inventory? What did your inventory reveal about your own personal, familial, and cultural values, beliefs, and practices as they relate to sustainability and the environment? [For example, why is it that in the US we tend to take for granted and not questions the availability and consumption of disposable items that we use on a daily basis- cups, bottles, packaging- when we could use the same cup or bottle and no packaging at all in most situations. In fact, reusing vessels or containers over and over again has been the rule not the exception throughout history, across different societies. Why is it that we toss valuable and limited resources with little or no second thought then?]
4. What did your inventory reveal that you did not already know? How does this lifestyle that you see reflected in your trash inventory compare and contrast with one advocated in the first few chapters of Radical Simplicity?

Due: Tuesday of second week.