I started this self-intervention project off strong, minimizing my trash and feeling confident. But as I predicted in my first post, the weekend proved to be the days where I collected the most trash. My trash bag filled up to the top by my last day. The weekends are where I have more time to cook bigger, more extravagant dinners; therefore, resulting in more trash as I throw away any packaging of the ingredients I used. For this particular week, because I was collecting my trash, I tried to limit the amount of food scraps that I throw away. But, I feel it is not an accurate depiction of what my usual weeks worth of trash would look like. I would be very curious to try this again to truly see how much trash I collect. Looking through my collected trash, the main ways to reduce my trash is to stop using plastic silverware (which I usually do not use but I had to because I was sick) and to stop buying plastic packaged items. For example, this week’s trash had an absurd amount of applesauce and mandarin oranges that come in little plastic bowls. I can easily reduce this by buying the larger jar of applesauce instead of the individual packs. Also, because it was a busy week for me, I ate out more than I wanted to, which often resulted in an unnecessary amount of “to go” paper bags. This is another thing I can keep in mind. Overall, I feel this self-intervention assignment helped me see how much damage I can cause if I continue my habits, and it also showed me new ways I can incorporate into my lifestyle!
