Frugal February #9: Trash--Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

How much do you pay for your weekly trash pickup?  Is it possible you could pay less by reducing the amount you throw out each week? 

I know that for some people, trash pick up is a monthly fee mandated by their municipality.  For others, though, trash is a negotiable thing.  At this little place here, we have to arrange for our own garbage collection.  We can choose not only what company to use for this service, but also a variety of plans.  The one we have is 2 bags (or one wheeled cart that holds the equivalent of two bags) per week.  From what I hear, this is usually the 'single person' or the 'old couple' plan.  Most people with children generate more trash than that, and have the 2-6 bag per week plan.  Hmm.  Even when both sons were living at home, making the population at this little place here six humans, we didn't have more than two bags of trash in one week.  Usually only one, but there isn't a one-bag plan, just a 'not more than 2 bags' plan.  Someday I'd love to have a one bag once a month option ;-)

How in the world did I manage to have six people and only one bag of trash, you say?  Well, I'm sure you've heard the buzz words before: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Reduce: I buy very little prepacked stuff from the store.  In other words, I don't have cardboard boxes of toaster pastries or waffles or breakfast cereal.  I don't have plastic wrappers and foam trays from packages of meat. I don't have potato chip bags or cardboard tubes from biscuit dough. No shiny foil granolar bar wrappers. If you're buying ingredients, not ready-to-eat stuff, you have a whole lot less packaging to tote out to the curb on trash day.

If you raise more of your own food, you buy less, therefore also reducing packaging.

If you burn wood for heat, you shouldn't be throwing anything paper into the trash can.  Paper goes in the wood burner, where it can make a useful contribution to you instead of costing you money to dispose of.  Even if you don't burn wood, you can compost your paper in the compost bin or by shredding it and using as mulch in the garden or flowerbeds.

If you have ever thought about canning some fruits or vegetables, you might want to consider how doing so can reduce the amount of trash you create.  Canning jars are reusable.  Tins cans or plastic containers from the store aren't.  At least, not for the food you're going to preserve at home.

So, by buying ingredients rather than snacks and all ready prepared meals at the grocery store, burning my paper, growing/raising/hunting a lot of my food, and canning my fruits and veggies, I reduce the amount of trash my family produces.

But what about that old worn out mattress, or that broken down couch that can't be repaired.  How do I get rid of that?  Well, it just so happens I have figured out ways to dispose of both those items.  A utility knife works wonders.  A hammer comes in handy on the couch.  For both items, I used the knife to open them up and expose their frames.  Cloth upholstery on the couch and the mattress is decomposable, or use able in the garden as mulch.  The foam cushions can be reused on something else if in good enough shape (like giant throw pillows--my kids toss them on the basement floor to sit on while playing video games) or they can be cut into smaller pieces and put into trash bags.  The trash man charges extra for big items like furniture, but doesn't charge for regular bags, put out within the weekly bag limit.  The wooden framework on a couch can be burned in the wood burner for heat, or in a campfire.  Metal framework on a couch, and the springs from the mattress can be sold/recycled as scrap metal.  Bed springs are also good for dragging across a garden or yard you want to seed, making a nice level seedbed.

Reuse:  Before you throw something away, ask yourself if that's the best thing to do with it.  Does it have any use left?  Plastic containers with lids are always useful.  Yogurt cups can be repurposed into seed starting pots.  Margarine tubs can hold buttons or safety pins or a myriad of other small things.  Coffee cans now have handles formed into them, and make great places to store screws or nails in the garage--when you have a project to work on, you can just grab the handle of the can, and away you go!

Unless you live in an apartment or a place with no yard whatsoever, food should never go in the trash can.  With the exception of meat, bones and fats, all food scraps can be composted.  If you have dogs or cats, give them the meat, the bones (except cooked poultry and pork), and the fat.  They'll love it, and it's a more natural diet than processed grains made into bite-sized kibble.  If you have chickens, they'll eat just about anything.  So will pigs.  If you have an outdoor wood burner, it also will dispose of those bones that your pets can't eat, or if you don't have pets.  Toss the bones in with the firewood, and think no more about it.  It's a wood burner.  It's a crematorium.  Even the ash from this can be reused as fertilizer.

Recycle:  We have never lived in a place that offered curbside recycling.  But, I have always recycled.  There is always somewhere you can take your glass, metal, and plastic items to.  Some places charge a small fee, others are free.  Some even take cardboard, newspapers and magazines.  Even electronic items can be recycled now.  Do an internet search for a place near you to take your recyclables, no matter what they are.


So, if you apply the three R's of reduce, reuse, and recycle, how much trash are you left with now?  Would you qualify for a lower plan through your rubbish removal service?  It might be worth checking into.

One other thing that you might want to ask about, is a discount for paying for your trash pick-up six months or even a year at a time.  I pay by the year, and get a 15% discount for doing so.  With this being the season of tax returns, now might be the time to hand over twelve months worth of trash pick-up fees in exchange for paying 15% less in the long run.  Ask your company if they'll do this.