Welcome to THE WASTE DIET! SEE US ON TV AT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYF_yimN0eE
THE WASTE DIET is a campaign to encourage people to reduce their Household landfill waste. Our household is committing ourselves to not sending any waste (or very minimal waste) to the landfill for the entire year of 2008. We are challenging every household in the country to try it for at least one day, one week, one month, or one year. Join us in our quest for less waste.
Do you know how much waste your household produces? I decided to measure ours and in one month alone, we sent over 240 lbs of waste to the landfill! I’m not so proud. We also generated over 100 lbs of recyclable waste including glass bottles, plastic, metal, aluminum, cardboard, etc at our local recyclers. Let us know how much waste you send to the landfill and what you are committing not to do in 2008 (click on "The Challenge" tab for more info).
If we can do it, so can you. Our household is comprised of a family of 4 who live in a suburban town in the Midwest. My husband and I have full-time 8-5 jobs and our 2 children attend the local public elementary school. We have a dog and 2 cats. We live in a 4 bedroom house on a suburban infill site about ¼ acres. We own 2 gas-guzzling vehicles and use electricity to run a plethora of convenient appliances. We do, however, live in a brand new green home (see "About Us" for more info about our green home) which is the inspiration for our quest. This will truly be a challenge for us. Our hope is to find environmentally friendly waste solutions while not drastically changing our lifestyle in the hopes that we’ll offer ideas and inspirations to others.
Take THE WASTE DIET challenge. Measure your household landfill waste for one month and send us your results along with your “WASTE DIET” goals for less waste in 2008. Click on "The Challenge" tab for more info. We will post stories and results on our website www.thewastediet.com We want to hear from you!
2008 Total household landfill waste to date: 147.7 pounds | Countdown to end of the year: |
| MONTH | WASTE SENT TO LANDFILL (OUR GOAL=32 LBS/MO) | WASTE SAVED FROM LANDFILL (NAT'L AVERAGE=264 LBS/MO) | RECYCLABLES |
| January 2008 | 23.2 LBS (includes 2 dirty diapers, chicken and fish carcasses, a broken barbie doll, and misc. plastic film, and cat litter) | 242.8 LBS | 69 LBS |
| February 2008 | 27 LBS (includes chicken carcass, plastic film, whipped cream cannister, and cat litter) | 237 LBS | 42 LBS |
| March 2008 | 44.5 LBS (includes 30 lbs of cat litter, more chicken carcasses, 2 broken glass bottles which my son threw them away before I had a chance to send them to the recycling bin, miscellaneous plastic film, and lots of plastic stuff leftover from Easter. This was not a very good month, hopefully next month will be better!) | 220 LBS | 108.5 LBS |
| April 2008 | 53 LBS (This trash includes our typical cat litter and plastic film. Plus, this month we started clearing our our yard, which was unkept until we moved in last July. We uncovered lots of buried trash including an old blanket, a bag of concrete, a bicycle wheel, old sheets and rags, glass bottles and lot of other junk. We recycled what we could but had to throw some of it away.) | 214 LBS | 24 LBS |
| May 2008 | |||
| June 2008 | |||
| July 2008 | |||
| August 2008 | |||
| September 2008 | |||
| October 2008 | |||
| November 2008 | |||
| December 2008 | |||
| YEAR TOTAL | 147.7LBS | 813.8 LBS | 135 LBS |
| PRE-WASTE DIET | |||
| November 2007 | 165.5 LBS | 102 LBS | |
| December 2007 | 153 LBS | 33 LBS |
If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please send your email address to maren@thewastediet.com.