An "Oscar" moment

I don't exactly love trash, but it's kind of hard to ignore if it's strewn all over the side of the road (India, China), lying on the sidewalk in wimpy plastic bags (like it is in London) or part of the soccer stadium (Seoul, Korea). Actually the Koreans not only used the site of a former dump for their stadium, but power the lights from its methane-producing refuse!

Recently we made a couple of electronic upgrades. Nothing exciting, just a cell phone for me and smart phone for Andy. But what to do with the old ones? I don't like to think too much about what we throw away, but if there is not a wormhole at the end of our garbage truck's route, our trash is still on this planet, right?

Speaking of trash, we've noticed for the past few months that we aren't filling up our 32 gallon can each week. Without pushing anything down, it ends up being half full. I called the trash service and discovered that we can go from paying $41 a month for once a week pick up, to $12 for just one pick up a month. So we're giving it a try.

Can we get by with just one garbage can full of trash a month? Portland has an awesome recyling system: paper, cardboard (paper on steriods), glass, metals and plastics with a screwtop neck are picked up for free every week. They get put out in our yellow bins--soon to be replaced by the city with fancy-wheeled blue carts. We also have a compost bin in the corner of our backyard where we can get rid of all veggie, fruit, paper towel, tea bag and egg shell waste. So come to think of it, our biggest amounts of trash are used kleenex and the dirty rat bedding.

Our friend Amy told us about a family who is trying to get by with just one can of garbage for the whole year. Wow, we Portlanders are really earnest folk! We're hoping to do our best and promise not to make any late night additions to our neighbors' garbage cans or threaten a "pack it in/pack it out" rule for visitors in order to make this work.