Skip the (trash) bag!
I shared a little while back that we'd stopped using trash bags in the house to reduce plastic waste. I've gotten some questions about how that works in practice so I thought I'd share a few things about our process.
The first and most significant step was signing up for Mr. Fox Composting. In all honesty I don't think we'd have made the jump to skipping kitchen trash bags without that first step of removing food waste from our trash. We've used Mr. Fox pick up for a few years now and love that pretty much all food waste can go in since it's commercial grade not just backyard composting. Bones, shells, leftovers, bacon grease (except what I save for bacon ginger snaps), paper towels, coffee grounds, and more all go in. Luckily Mr Fox has bins at many local recycling centers too so even if you're not interested in paying for pick up, you can still get your food waste out of the trash can (a win-win for you and local waste streams).
Once the food was out, our trash was significantly less gross and we probably could have dropped the bags in the cans much earlier than we did but I was still worried about the potential mess. What did the trick for me was realizing that we'd never used bags for our recycling (huge issue for sorters!) and that at this point our trash was mostly just the random unrecyclables and not that different. It still felt strange to drop the bag though.
When we do have an item that is a little gross or wet (i.e. if we buy chicken or something), I just make sure it's self contained and/ or tuck it into another item I'm throwing out like a chip or bread bag.
I should be clear that while we no longer use bags in most trash cans, we're not completely bag-free. For example, the scooped kitty litter goes in an old grocery bag first to reduce smell.
Dover is a pay-as-you-throw (PAYT aka bag and tag) structure so we still use the City bags to bring trash to the curb, but I find we're using them much more efficiently. Our trash can has an internal bin that's really easy to just lift out and dump into the big City bag. And there's the added bonus that the squirrels and crows don't tear open the bags anymore!
While this is an individual action we can each take to send market signals about what's important, it should go without saying that corporations need to take bold action and governments need to set the right conditions to make it easier for consumers to make sustainable choices going forward.
What are your questions about going bagless? For those who have made the switch, what are your tips? How can we scale up a change like this?
