Gerry brought up an important question in the plastic debate which deserves a follow-up.

Gerry Keane says:
I have just stopped using plastic grocery bags. My problem is that they are very handy for kitchen garbage. I live in an apartment and am unsure what to use in their place. I don’t want to start buying more plastic “Kitchen Catchers.”

Any suggestions?

Thanks…
Gerry

Thanks for the question Gerry! It is neither a simple nor easy one, but here’s some ideas. As Brady suggested not using any garbage bags is great if allowed in your city, however many places forbid loose trash.

There are biodegradable bags available, but the conditions in landfills prohibit them from disintegrating. Actually, landfill conditions prohibit even natural garbage, such as apple cores or banana peals, from degrading in natural ways. No Impact Man and garbage.

The problem is the design of the modern landfill (which you can read about in Elizabeth Royte’s fascinating Garbage Land). The landfill is not designed to help things to biodegrade, which requires contact with air and water. Instead, landfills hermetically seal their contents away from the environment to protect it from the toxic things in the landfill that aren’t biodegradable (of course, the seal breaks down in 70 years and leaves a toxic mess for our grandchildren to deal with, but that’s another story).

What this means, is that organic things like apple cores and yesterdays newspapers and cornstarch cups, when dumped in the landfill, either don’t break down at all—and certainly don’t end up returning nutrients to the earth—or they break down anaerobically, which means they produce methane, a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

So ultimately any biodegradable products that end up in landfills are just garbage with fancy, feel good names.

The best solution to this problem is composting. If you are in a large city, and small apartment check out No Impact Man and if your city has compost drop off sites. If you have an outdoor area, there are many different composters available for purchase, or you can take the cheaper route and build it yourself. I’m hoping to get ours built this summer, so if you have any tips please let us know! To avoid odors or fruit flies, simply pick up some biodegradable bags and collect compostable garbage indoors, tie it up and toss the bag in your outdoor composter.

Waste reduction is also an incredibly important element. Simple awareness of product packaging and conscious purchasing can help reduce individual garbage output. For example,instead of the individual yogurt cups, buy a large container of yogurt and then dish out a portion in a reusable container (maybe one of those old yogurt cups) to take with you. And reuse! For some free Tupperware, just wash out your old plastic or glass containers and use them to store leftovers. And it never hurts to ask. If you have a favorite product that seems to over package, let the company know. After all, if it will make the customer happy and save them money in packaging, I doubt they’ll be reluctant to comply!

Last, if composting is not an option, there are 100% recycled trash bags. While it is still using plastic, it is not virgin but rather 100% post consumer recycled.

“If every household in the U.S. replaced just one package of 30 count tall kitchen bags made from virgin plastic with 100% recycled ones, we could save:

• 89,700 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 5,100 U.S. homes for a year

• 1.6 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 2,400 full garbage trucks

• and avoid 33,300 tons of pollution”

For other waste reduction ideas, check out more from No Impact Man, a NY family experimenting with how to cause no net impact on the environment, with the first phase being no waste. Which means no toilet paper. Zero. Wow.

I hope these ideas helped! If anyone else has some gems to toss into the ring, please don’t hesitate!