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Ari Derfel likes living with his garbage. He hasn't thrown anything away in more than a year, but he insists he doesn't suffer from any compulsive hoarding disorders. Instead, Derfel views the bins of bottles, boxes, leaflets, cartons, and wrappers he's stacked in his Berkeley, California, home as fruits of a continued meditation about sustainability. In fact, he's joined a handful of bloggers who are going to extremes to keep their rubbish out of the landfill.
"Something inside me doesn't feel right every time I throw things away," said Derfel, who runs an organic catering company. "When I look around at the piles, it's like, 'Hey, man, here's your life. Here's what you spend your money on and put in your body.' It has a profound impact."
Motivated by global warming, he and his fellow bloggers say they are fed up with promiscuously packaged, toxic products and other evils of conspicuous consumption they say are trashing the planet. These pack rats are stashing their trash at home and then writing about, photographing, and even weighing it. They belong to a growing cadre of green lifestyle bloggers who provide a personal angle to broader issues covered by big-name eco blogs.
'Refuse, reuse, recycle'
To avoid packaging, Derfel and other trash bloggers tote reusable bags to the grocery store, carry reusable water canteens, and buy in bulk. They even count their nail clippings, rip off the paper tablecloths from chic restaurants, and fly home with waste from Hawaii vacations. Composting food scraps for garden fertiliser keeps them from dwelling with a vermin-infested stench.
In the process, they say they are saving money and discovering meaningful side benefits, like spending more time on hobbies, exercising more, cooking meals, and hanging out with family instead of shopping.
Similarly, Dave Chameides, 38, calls "Refuse, reuse, recycle" his mantra. The Los Angeles man, who operates a Steadicam for popular TV programmes for a living, started storing his garbage in the basement this year. January's heap includes two bags of recyclable paper and cardboard, a plastic box of potentially reusable items including a strawberry basket and egg carton, a bag of plastic bags and wrappers, 30 plastic and glass bottles, and a worm compost bin.
Blogger Envirowoman from Vancouver, Canada, began tracking her rubbish in 2006. The project led her to postpone dental treatment (X-ray covers are plastic) and repainting her car (to avoid plastic sheeting). She started buying powdered milk in bulk bins and gave up frozen pizza, dish soap and nail polish.
Tracking trash
Their rubbish piles may be modest compared to national US averages, but they reflect patterns in what Americans throw away overall. Up to 65 percent of the nation's 251 million tonnes of annual waste comes from households as opposed to businesses and institutions, according to the EPA.
And although the majority of US consumer waste is recyclable, just under one-third of it actually gets recycled. The EPA ranks paper products as making up more than two-thirds of U.S. waste, with yard trimmings next, followed by food scraps and plastics, which each make up about 12 percent of national totals.
"It's bigger than just trash," said New Yorker Leila Darabi. "The whole green blog world is growing exponentially." Her blog, Everyday Trash, follows the trend she calls 'garblogging', which encompasses those who track their trash, wonky policy analysts, and a quirky subgenre of writers who run 'trashion' sites about clothing made from waste.
There also have been collective web-based challenges along similar lines. Crunchy Chicken, a blog by 37-year-old Seattle mom Deanna Duke, attracts 26,000 readers monthly, and got 200 people to join her challenge to eliminate food waste, according to Duke. "I think it will catch on," Darabi said of those who chronicle attempts to reduce their waste. "It's an activism tool that's being honed and used and is easy to replicate." Ari Derfel plans to launch a challenge on Earth Day, daring 100 people to track their trash as he's done. Later this year, several of his yoga teacher friends will be touring Europe with their own trash in tow, showing it off as they hop across borders.
And Derfel aspires to create a documentary about the experience, a sort of Super Size Me about garbage. Chameides, meanwhile, has already been filming his own project, hoping to bring a very personal effort further into the public mindset.
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