On Tuesday I was challenged to collect all of my waste for 24 hours to measure how much I throw away in a typical day. I began collecting my trash yesterday, Wednesday, at 2pm.
What I found through this experiment is that I am doing a decent job of reducing my carbon footprint. By no means do I mean I am doing a perfect job reducing my waste, but I am well under the EPA's estimated averages. The EPA estimates that Americans throw away 4.4lbs of trash each day. At the end of 24 hours I only had about 1lbs. of trash collected. I reuse my plastic water bottles and also recycle anything that I can. The two areas I know I can improve upon are the amount of paper I use and the amount of water I send down the drain.
It seems that every week I am printing off new PowerPoint notes for class, exam reviews, and articles for research. If I were to use daily what I happened to use in the past 24 hours. I estimate that I would throw away about 5,000 sheets of paper. One way I can combat this is by leaving my notes in electronic form. As for water... I have such a bad habit of turning on the shower or faucet and then leaving to go do something! Ugh, such a bad routine to be in! I have to start reminding myself of how much water flows out every minute the faucet is on, almost 2 gallons!!
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