I’ve been thinking about trash.

I’ve been thinking about trash lately. How much we make; where it goes; how to make less; what happens when it gets to its destination.

We save plastic shopping bags from the grocery store and use those as trash bags. When the space under the sink is filling up with plastic bags, we take canvas bags to the store. When we’re running out of plastic bags, we leave the canvas bags at home. When the trash needs to be emptied, we take it up to the marina trash room and dump it in a big trash barrel. Once a week a trash truck comes and takes the trash. Recycling? Nope. It’s 2011 and there still is no recycling at this marina.

But is there a way to reduce my plastic use. A few months ago I read a quote by a guy who was talking about the food industry’s tendency to wrap cheese in plastic. We are wrapping something with a shelf life of about 3 months with a wrapper that will last much, much longer. Why not wax paper? The same holds true for my trash bags. A lot of my trash is biodegradable: paper, food waste; yet I stuff it in plastic bags where its chance of biodegrading is slim to none.

How about using paper bags for trash bags? Well, all the wet trash (food scraps) would make the bag soggy leaving me with the great risk of dumping a bag load of trash on the marina dock before making it up to the trash room. Plastic bags for food waste? But that defeats the purpose. The biodegradable stuff would be wrapped in plastic.

Any ideas?