Personal Municipal Solid Waste Inventory

Created by Ben Smith, a teacher in Palos Verdes California, this week long project serves to "inventory all solid waste items used in a seven-day period which would enter the waste stream or be recycled." This is the purpose of the project written in the handout. This project started, Friday the 6th of January, and lasted until the following Friday on the 13th. The end goal of this project is not only to see how much municipal solid waste the individual collects over a week, but use that amount to calculate annual waste that student would have produced.

Each student in all three sections of Alan's AP Environmental Science class were instructed to dispose of the waste they generated in a trash bag that they would in turn save until it was time to record their items. We were told to place all waste that we have produced in our bags, trash and recycling alike; there were a few exceptions, however, no food waste and definitely no toilet paper. Students were offered extra credit for those who were found carrying around their trash during the day. Once the seven day period was up, students brought their bags to class to sort and weight their trash. Sorting was a gruelling requirement, some students took up whole desks and countertops to remove and place their individual items according to the appropriate categories. These categories are the following: plastic, paper, cardboard or paperboard, aluminum, glass, mixed metals, styrofoam. For each category, the student needs to record the number of items total, and record the number of an item pertaining to a specific description. An example for plastics would be, food wrappers, packaging, straws, beverage containers and so on. The next step is to weight the waste for that category in grams, students need to find the waste per week, then find how much waste that would be after a year. So by multiplying the number by 52, you will get the amount produced in a year. Personally, my largest category of waste is unfortunately plastic. I generated roughly 500 grams of plastic waste in one week. That's 26000 grams a year! I attribute this sad fact to my large consumption of plastic water bottles. Cardboard and aluminum were also a good portion of my waste with, 2,444 grams of cardboard a year, and 4,357 grams of aluminum a year. A surprise for me was that one item of styrofoam, correlated to 342 pounds of styrofoam waste a new. Another blow to my self esteem and my status as a climate supporter is that, the most recycled form of waste was second to last in weight. Paper, which gets recycled the most out of any waste product, only came up to 826 pounds annually. That is 32% less that my yearly plastic waste. In total, I produced 74 items of trash or recycled goods in that week; this correlates to 3,848 items annually. My total mass, in pounds, for the week is 1.442. A year, that number would become 75 pounds. The average american puts out 2,071 pounds of waste a year, 710 pounds of recycling and 1,361 of trash. Based on this one week of focus on my trash, my yearly waste output is well under the american average.

For this blog, Alan decided to show some remorse for his students by having us record out answers to questions in the handout on the day of the lab. Thank you Alan, you saved me a lot of time tonight. The first questions asked," Based on your observations of the solid waste material displayed on all of the desks in the room, what type of category of municipal solid waste. seems to be the most abundant. My answer to this questions was this:

The biggest one I noticed seemed to dominate, not only my trash bags, but the whole class was beverage receptacles. From aluminum cans and plastic bottles, my classmates seemed well refreshed and hydrated from all the waste sitting on the counters and desks. Another was simple plastic wrappers. Though they are small, they seem to add up unexpectedly.

2. Describe three significant and specific environmental impacts which are associated with the "life cycle" of the material type which you identified in question 1 above.

One would be the production of these materials. Maybe somewhere, it was recycled from old waste, but the majority were single-use items that had to come from somewhere; they didn’t just materialize out of thin air, they had to be produced. Another was a failure to recover these items. If we did not have a specific trash bag to collect this waste, the waste might not have made it into the landfill or the incinerator. Lastly, is the disposal of this waste. Whether it gets processed and placed in a landfill or ends up getting burned, its disposal is affecting the environment.

3. If your parents completed this same solid waste project, how do you think their inventories would differ, in terms of types and amounts of materials used in a week or in a year? In addition to your thoughts on this matter, please discuss this questions with your parents and record their specific feedback regarding this point.

I believe that it would be different for my mom and my dad. My mom works a lot and tends to deliver food most of the time, as well as her lifestyle I would say she would have between half a pound to a pound of trash. My dad on the other hand has a different lifestyle and is very conscious of his routine and the things he buys. I think the only substantial trash that he would generate is food containers.

A quote from my mom when I asked her this question, she responded with this, "2 bags of garbage and 2 bags recycling, Because we need to bring garbage bags to dumpster about 2x per week. And need to empty recycling bin about the same - that’s for 2 people. In Seattle I have those tiny cans but I need to take them out to the 3 bins and very 2 days or so - compost, recycle and garbage." My dad's response to both the question and his wife is, "I’d think bit less. Per person about 2/3 bag. It’s easy for me to go from Lexie departure to Lexie return without going to dumpster (5-10 days). Recency bias with xmas packaging can give sense of more."

The last three questions are more reflection. These are the questions and my answers.

4. Did you alter your choices about food eaten and/or items purchased/used during the last 7 days, due to the type or amount of packaging? Describe how your choices were modified during this assignment if you did the bonus portion of the inventor (the “carry”), was there ever a decision not to, for example, have a little orange juice, because it would mean needing to carry a large juice container around in your solid waste bags?

I felt no change in my choices or my thoughts while consuming products. There was a time that I had a cardboard box that I had to lug around after I picked it up.

5. Discuss any aspects of this assignment that you found significant, meaningful, and/or worthwhile. Describe any experiences you may have had relating to this inventory/carry of your municipal solid waste around campus for seven days that you think are memorable?

A harsh reality that hit me while I was sorting through my trash was the role I was playing in the growing harmful plastic consumption. The plastic item with the most stigma around it, dominated my trash bag. This is the plastic single use water bottle. I consume the plastic water because the water in my dorm has a metallic, foul taste. This lab was an interesting and significant experience because trash is so abundant in our society, and it is easy to not think about the cycle it has.

6. Would you chance anything about this assignment? If "yes", please describe:

No, this was an incredibly smart and well thought out experiment. I definitely appreciated it and it fit in perfectly with our current unit. A constraint of this experiment to consider is, maybe the students did not carry around their trash and record their individual trash for that week. They could have just grabbed assorted or random trash for bins in their dorms. However, this is a very difficult potential source of error to control since high schoolers are not very capable of remember little details throughout the day.

All photos are taken by me, the author

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