As much as I would love to hold onto every scrap of garbage I would throw away in my day to day life that kind of undertaking is too difficult for me. I work at Trader Joe’s where we’re constantly using single-use items; cardboard boxes, blades for box cutters, alcoholic wipes for cleaning, etc. So before I started my week I decided to lay the ground rule of just keeping track of garbage that I use in my “personal” life. That is all of my food waste from cooking, papers from school, flyers given to me on campus, tissues, face wipes, and paper towels. I think, and my roommates would agree, this self intervention is gross on a couple of different levels. We made corn bread last week that went stale, and now that corn bread lives in a febreeze scented bag in my room. I feel like a chipmunk hoarding all of my used paper towels in my pockets at work and have already gotten a double take from some managers. It’s also gross to see the amount of plastic I’m consuming. My Geography professor told us yesterday he read somewhere that every bit of plastic ever made is still somewhere on the earth. It’s terrifying to me that after 2 days I have two paper bags full of things that will never decompose.
Olivia Hansel
