A couple of years or so ago, our county started separating organic and non-organic trash collection. We live in a smaller out-lying town and didn’t have to switch over until late spring of last year (and actually, we didn’t have to switch, but there is quite a price incentive to do so), so we’re still a bit new at the game. It was easier than I had anticipated to set up two separate trash cans under the sink, and it really took no time at all to get used to putting the “food trash” in one bin, and everything else in the other. The really hard part is that, because the two separate cans are emptied on alternating weeks, we have to figure out how to fit two weeks’ worth of garbage into a space we’d gotten used to having cleared every week.

It’s “real trash” night tonight, and we’re already filled to overflowing, with more bags stashed here and there to take out once the can is emptied tomorrow morning. It frustrates me to no end that no sooner is the trash taken away than we’ve filled it a third of the way again with garbage we’ve had to “save” until next time. The thing is, I’m having a really hard time finding a way around it. Even before the switch to separating organic from non-organic, we recycled almost everything, so it was really only food waste that got taken out of our regular trash.

Our regular trash now is mostly diapers, soft plastic (not recyclable up here), and envelopes/packing material (see “soft plastic”). Not only are those things really hard to cut back on, but we’re just weeks away from adding even more diapers into the mix. I have toyed, briefly, with the idea of using cloth on the new baby, but I tried that with Tage and didn’t really love it (or see a huge environmental-impact/cost difference when I ran all the numbers), so I don’t see it happening this time. I think that we may end up having to splash out and pay extra for a bigger can, at least for as long as we’ve got kids in diapers. How disappointing.