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Re:The Disappearing Art of Maintenance by Syonyk on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @01:49PM (#32998676)
Getting rid of trash service would solve a lot, yes... though it would take some adjustments. It's a lot harder if you're denser urban.

I got tired of paying a lot of money to have trash hauled, so I solved it around our property. I built a trash trailer out of some old stuff laying at a relative's place (old pickup bed trailer and a topper, some new plywood for the bottom, some Great Stuff foam to seal it up, and a couple used tires), and I now haul trash every 18 months, aiming for 24 months. Food waste goes to the property cats or the compost bins, and I'm able to separate out almost all our waste stream into assorted recycling or reusable packing material (boxes, newspaper, random padding, stuff like that gets reused either by me or by some other people locally with some ecommerce sorts of sales flows). Very little ends up in the trash trailer, and it's not organic, so it just sits there until I haul it.

It's really quite eye opening just how much waste there is in the normal flows of packaging material. I have a local(ish...) way to deal with plastic waste, so I can deal with the "mixed unusual plastics" in a recycling flow as well (it goes to be burned to offset coal use in a cement kiln over in Utah), but that makes up an awful lot of volume in our waste.

With the metal recycling, though, I'm "net positive" on annual trash spend now, and I'm far better able to optimize our waste streams down than I was before. But I also recognize this isn't something that will scale nearly as easily as I can do it.

Re:The Disappearing Art of Maintenance by mrguyorama on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @05:02PM (#33001068)
My trash pickup is included in my rent, but to take out the trash involves walking 500 feet accross the property, which turns out is a lot of effort carrying tens of pounds of awkward trash.

So I make less trash now. That cheese danish in the store looks tasty, but the plastic clamshell packaging is incredibly space inefficient as trash, so I'll buy the cookies instead, they're in easy to compact paper boxes. Maybe you think I'm putting a burden on myself but I didn't need either the danish or the cookies in the first place!