The Rubbish Diet is an inspiring blog which details the efforts of one British woman to curb her family's packaging!

Putting your garbage cans on a diet involves abstaining from the purchase of products which come with a lot of packaging.

If you can make it or re-use it instead of buy it new, you will certainly shrink your waste!

http://www.therubbishdiet.co.uk/

This was a really interesting blog to read. Thank you for sharing it! I always find it encouraging to read about people who are going through the struggle of trying to be conscientious environmentalists in their daily lives.

Although it is great for each of us to set our own personal goals about reducing waste, it is also interesting to note that certain communities have implemented policy initiatives that help reduce waste. For example, the city of Ithaca, New York, charges a fee for each bag of garbage thrown away, but the city does not charge for recycling services. For more information on Ithaca's waste policies, check out this website:

http://www.ci.ithaca.ny.us/index.asp?Type=B_
BASIC&SEC=%7BDFA5589F-B980-4364-A6F4-773FCDE
DFDC%7D&DE=%7B07AE0D86-0947-4AC7-8751-0013AB
D4680B%7D

The town I grew up in also charged per garbage can. There were stickers required. It also meant people were more hesitant about just sticking furniture by the curb, because if no one took it they would have to pay for it.

On another note, I was walking around Boston today and there were all these solar powered garbage cans. And I thought, well that's neat that they are using solar power, but since when do garbage cans require power? Apparently these trash cans, called Big Belly Solar Trash Compactors, use the solar panel to run a motor which compacts the trash when it reaches a certain level. This allows the can to hold much more than a regular trash can and decreases the need for city workers to come by and empty the containers. On the one hand, this reduces fuel used to make each trip as well as saving money on labor costs and reducing mess and smell. On the other hand, I wonder if the bins are an attempt to appear as a greener city without making policy changes. There are no recycling bins nearby, so the compactor bins do not do anything to reduce the amount of trash thrown out.
Still they look pretty sweet and I like the idea of solar panels if you are going to use a compactor.

I think this is a great idea! I, too, have noticed these in Chicago, and NYC. Apparently many large cities, beaches, state and national parks are making the transition to these solar trash compactors.

NPR released an article explaining some of the reasoning behind them. Although they do not address their relation to specific policy changes, they do address a number of environmental concerns. Some of them being: they reduce the amount of birds feeding on spilled or overflowing garbage whose dropping are responsible for E.Coli and other bacteria in the water; they are heavy and hold well over twice as much garbage, minimizing the amount of trash left on the ground or the cans blowing over; because they hold so much more waste, it cuts down on the amount of pick up trips by garbage trucks which are some of the most inefficient vehicles out there.

So far, they seem like a win win option. The article I was reading can be found below:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12
045048

This NPR article was very interesting. Thank you for referring us to it. $4,000 is quite pricey for a garbage can, I must say. But it's true that using these compactors will probably end up saving the cities money, unless of course the compactors require frequent repair, which I suppose we don't know yet.

Interestingly, there was also an initiative in New Mexico last summer on the garbage can front. A new system was invented for cleaning garbage cans with EPA-approved, biodegradable cleaning fluids. This system can cut back on dangerous runoff that generally leaks into waterways, decreasing the negative environmental impact of a city's garbage disposal. It sounds like a good idea to me!

Here's an article about the system from New Mexico Business Weekly:

http://albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/
2007/07/30/daily14.html?jst=b_ln_hl

Those solar trash compactors do sound like a good idea. If only they also had ones for recyclables. Then it would be an even more win-win situation. Then cities could possibly reduce the amount of trash as well. Of course, at $4000 each that would be quite an undertaking. In the meantime, we can all do as much as we can to reduce our waste.

Thanks for sharing! It's always interesting to learn what steps others are taking!