Man Keeps All of His Trash for One Year

Dave Chameides of 365 Days of Trash blog wrote to us about his project of keeping all the trash he generates in a year:

The idea for this project came about six months ago as I was throwing something away in the garbage. It occurred to me that I was doing nothing more than that. I was making it go away, not dealing with it, not accounting for it, simply removing it from my sight. [...]

So starting tonight at midnight, I am not going to throw anything away for 365 days in order to see what my impact is. It sounds sort of nuts at first (perhaps for a bit after that as well), and believe me, while I am intrigued by the concept, I’ll admit that there are parts of it that I am dreading. Am I really looking forward to going on vacation and bringing all my trash home in a suitcase? Hardly, but that said, I need to be honest about this or it’s not worth doing in the first place. My hope is that, as the experiment takes shape, I will be able to quickly ascertain what waste I can simply cut out through choices, what waste is necessary but that can be dealt with in a sustainable way, and what waste I just simply can’t do anything about.

He's keeping all the trash in his basement and you can follow his "progress" at his blog here: Link - Thanks Dave!


Probably CheeseDuck. I could just imagine him thinking, hmmm, someone already took a picture of themselves everday for a few years, playing video game tunes on my harmonica is so yesterday, what else can I do to get "famous?" Yea, that's it, I'll save my trash for one year, document it online, and become the next big thing since soy milk!
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Cool concept, definitely some educational value. Seeing that he's just 1/4 done, I'm curious if he's going to fit it all, the basement doesn't look like it may be large enough....?
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I can see that this would be both educational and just down right gross. Course to make a drastic change in your life you have to take a drastic course I suppose.
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I attempted this a few years ago. I managed to fill a small 8x8x8 shed of compact, sorted garbage. It was not an enjoyable experience to sort/recycle the aftermath, but was a good exercise in reducing my personal consuption.
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It's nice to see someone do this without it being a result of mental illness.

Of course I think he could also do a decent job of weighing his trash week to week and looking at reasonable methods of cutting down each week. That would avoid the whole smell and explosion in disease causing scavengers/vermin and, of course, the eventual outbreak of bubonic plague.
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