garbage

As I was carting eight bags of garbage, not including yard waste, to the curb last night something occurred to me. For a family of two adults and one small child in a modest house we produce a lot of garbage. This is even compared to the typical American.

This time, around at two or three of those bags can be blamed on us converting our office to the new baby's room and one bag can be blamed on diapers. We have had a backlog of garbage due to other things we have been doing around the house, so it felt good to get that many bags out to the curb.

Even if there is a reason for most of our garbage, we constantly seem to put more garbage out than the neighbors. Golden noted that the man who lives across the street, albeit by himself, puts a single small bag on the curb every week. The only houses in the area that regularly put out the same number of bags that we do are the ones with multiple kids. It has me asking what we are doing differently.

Two things that we do not do that we may have to if Overland Park sets a tight limit on bags are recycle and use a trash compactor. Do most people recycle and compact? Are we more or less alone in garbage habits? Is this post going to someday earn me the ire of the Sierra Club?