I like to think of myself as an environmentally conscious person. I use a reusable water bottle pretty religiously, brush my teeth with a bamboo toothbrush and make sure to turn off the lights when I leave the room. As a current AP Environmental Science student who is also thinking about majoring in the subject in college, I understand that everyone plays a part in the health of our planet, no matter how small. As a way to measure my own bad habits when it comes to the environment, I decided to make myself a trash jar.
Throughout the course of a week, I challenged myself to go through each day collecting all of my trash to store in a jar resting on my desk. For all of the trash that could not be recycled, I made sure to hold onto it until it could be placed in my jar, even if that meant carrying around empty chips bags in my backpack. For me, most of the waste I accumulated came from mealtimes, specifically lunch.
It seemed as though after every lunch, I would carry around more and more waste. From the discarded Baked Cheetos wrappers to the tissues I would blow my nose with, my jar was starting to fill up. By the end of the week my jar contained 13 food wrappers, seven cough drop wrappers, four gum wrappers, three receipts, two sheets of used paper towel, a hot cocoa packet, plastic straw and a tissue. Despite what I thought was a lot of waste, the contents of my trash jar only weighed 2.3 ounces by the end of this experiment. According to epa.gov, the average person generates 4.9 lbs of trash per day, so while I did in fact contribute to the wrappers and other trash found in landfills, I was not as prolific as the average person– however that does not include all of the garbage generated by my family. While I think that this experience has mostly highlighted my eating habits, it really demonstrates how much waste can be cut down through reusable containers, which my kitchen cupboards severely lacked.
Through my trash jar, I have had to see first hand what I throw out as a reminder to myself that despite my best wishes I am contributing to Earth’s poor health. Seeing as Earth Day is April 22 and we are all people of this planet, I encourage you all to ask yourself before you throw something away: can it be reused or recycled? I also encourage you to take a walk, buy food that isn’t individually wrapped and even plant some flowers. These steps may seem small, but they make all the difference.
