Skip to main content

Currently take out trash once every 2-3 months

We are a month into 2016 now and rather than leave out our trash every week or two for pickup, it looks like we will only need our trash picked up at the curb once every 2-3 months. We currently have the smallest trash service possible in Sunnyvale. We've made some huge leaps in waste efficiency (many of which I still need to blog about).  Again our goal is to get as close to to zero waste as possible for our household by the end of 2016.

We now have a small 2 quart black bucket that collects the trash for our entire house. Here is a picture of it next to our 2 little dogs:



And a picture of it next to our indoor kitchen compost and recycling collection bins:


The liners in the compost and recycling bins you see are certified compostable. The one used for recycling is rotated and becomes the one for compost after we empty the recycling into our outdoor recycling bin. The compost one makes it easier to toss the collected compost into a larger commercial composting facility and then the compost bin gets a new liner and becomes the one we collect recycling in. Here are the 13 gallon liners we currently use: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004V5XCSC

We no longer use any plastic trash bags. Our recycling and trash are now pretty "clean" since all the messy organics end up in the compost bin.

When Sunnyvale starts picking up food scrap compostables directly we may move to zero liners saving that resource and expense. Our outdoor trash, recycling, and yard waste bins require no liners.

Comments

Mankikars said…
Tim - you mention taking compost to "a larger commercial composting facility". Where is that? How does this work? - Leena
Tim Oey said…
While my city of Sunnyvale does not yet have food scrap compost pick up, some neighboring cities do have this. Plus some businesses (like restaurants and large employers) are required to have this. So I've scouted out some locations where I can easily and surreptitiously drop off a small compostable bag of food scraps into commercial green bins once a week or so while doing other errands. It's urban gorilla composting.

Popular posts from this blog

Zero Waste Restaurant Takeout

  Take out food containers are mostly trash and cannot be recycled due to mixed materials and contamination. The good news is that it is legal and super easy to  get zero waste takeout from most ANY restaurant in California  that can serve onto its own reusable plates!! This way you can get your food to eat at home on real plates with real cutlery and not create any trash. Read on to learn how! In the picture above I am picking up a pizza in as Zero Waste way as possible from Jake's of Sunnyvale -- the pizza goes into an aluminum pizza container I made from two 20" pizza pans. The paired set of aluminum pans then goes into a reusable pizza bag that keeps the pizza warm -- watch out, a fresh pizza makes the aluminum pans very hot (and sterile)!  I bike it all home in my covered all purpose bike trailer. I use a clean sheet to line the inside when carrying food. Here is a sequence of pictures I took at a different pizzeria that show off the pans I use. I tried to find ...

Help make the CA DMV bicycle friendly!

Bicycling is inexpensive, healthy, and the most efficient form of transportation around. Please write to California Governor Gavin Newsom and encourage him to make all California DMV offices truly friendly to bicyclists. Below is the email I sent him at https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/ . Alas I could not send along pictures in the form based email submission but here are some pictures from my recent DMV visit.  At the DMV in Santa Clara: Their lonely and isolated wheel bender rack is flush against a wall so the center section that bends your wheel cannot even be used: Luckily with COVID there are lots of guards and staff outside at their entrance so they watched my bike next to the front door while I was inside: Locking my commuter/shopping bike to an outdoor bike rack is a big pain and risky -- it is much easier to roll it inside with me. I tend to only shop where I can bring my bike inside because I bike everywhere and use my bike as my shopping cart. Most places do not have...

Would you like to be $2 Million Richer?

How would you like to be a millionaire? One way to help you get there is to save money. If you are a couple who is thinking of having 2 kids and 2 cars here are two big ways to reduce your costs. The USDA recently calculated that the average child in the US would cost $233,610 to raise from 0 to age 17. This does not include college costs. College costs can vary widely (community colleges are a great deal) but if you send your kid to a private college this can easily cost $50,000 to $70.000 a year or $200,000 to $280,000 for 4 years. So if a young couple chooses NOT to have two children, they could save roughly $1 million! Now on the car front, AAA recently calculated that the average cost of car ownership in the US is $9282 per year . That comes to $557,000 per car over a lifetime of car ownership (say about 60 years). So if a young couple decides to forgo owning two cars and use bicycles to get around instead they will save about $1.1 million! Combine the savings from deciding not t...