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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.

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Mankikars said…
Tim - you mention taking compost to "a larger commercial composting facility". Where is that? How does this work? - Leena
May 12, 2016 at 10:35 PM
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.
June 10, 2016 at 11:47 AM
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