Wasting Waste.

This weeks assignment is on waste management. I contemplated not doing this assignment based on the fact that I was pretty sure I'd feel embarrassed at the amount of trash I throw away on a daily basis. That sounds pretty bad, right? I mean how much trash is really "too much?"
I kept track of my trash for a two day period.  I accumulated a trash can full (your typical 13 gallon kitchen trash can) each day.
The majority of the space was taken up by diapers and baby wipes  I have a 7 month old who pees like a racehorse! We also have a cat, and in an effort to keep the house fresh and clean, I clean out the litter box every time she goes to the bathroom. The kitty waste is put into a plastic bag, so that means more plastic bags than necessary. I also prepare my own baby food (most of the time) so a lot of fruit stems and peels went into the trash during this assignment. Tons of paper towels, because I don't like using dish towels... perhaps I'm a little obsessive about germs on that note haha. In two days I used an entire roll of paper towels. Packaging from chicken breasts and frozen veggies (dinner, both nights). All leftovers from all meals went into the trash as well.
In my own defense, we do have a separate trash for recyclables  The bad part is I know that so many items  that can don't actually go into that trash can.

After keeping track of my trash, I searched for waste-reduction strategies. 

The most popular strategy is to recycle!
Reduce over-purchasing of food
Only cook what you know you will eat, otherwise use reusable containers for leftovers
Reuse old paper
Use reusable bags
Avoid individually packaged foods
Buy recycled paper products, or use cloth napkins
Use cloth diapers
Use cloths instead of wipes
Use a reusable water bottle instead of plastics
Make a compost
Don't use plastic baggies when purchasing produce

Now lets measure my waste for another two days. 
I'd like to say my waste was significantly reduced, but I still ended up taking out the trash night. The plus side was that the trash was not completely full like in the first two days, I took it out so the house wouldn't smell. I managed to reduce my  food waste by storing leftovers in reusable containers. I do have a diaper genie that holds dirty diapers, but I had been too cheap to buy the bags that go inside and it seemed pointless since I could just throw diapers into the trash. After the initial two days I did start using the diaper genie again, seeing many benefits in waste reduction. I even contemplated buying the cat genie, a similar device that is supposed to take the place of plastic bags when cleaning out a litter box, but I just couldn't see myself actually letting the cat poop sit in the house all night. I still used paper towels but was definitely more conscious of how many I used and significantly reduced the amount. I intentionally wasn't using reusable bags so that I would have plastic to throw away the cat litter in. I do own quite a bit of reusable bags though, so I made a point to use them as often as I get plastic bags. As I mentioned earlier we do have a separate trash can for things that can go into the big blue recycle containers. During the second two day period I was careful about which trash can I placed waste in and was happy to discover that I did a good job at using the recyclable one. 
The waste-reductions strategies I actually implemented were easy and quite frankly, logical, and I have no problem being more conscious and continuing to do them.