Well, what about this...

I am presuming that most people do not spend that much time thinking about their trash. Not that any rational person generally would. But perhaps it would be a good idea. The biggest challenge Amy and I have faced in making our changes is what is biodegradable, what is not, and what falls into that middle zone of "I'm not sure". In order to quantify what we are using on any given day we decided to separate our trash, paper from plastic, food, plasticized paper and foils. It is these last two categories that seem to create the most difficulty because they really were not ones either of us even considered. I am beginning to realize how much "paper" is coated with some sort of waxy residue. Presumably it is a petroleum based paraffin product. Un-reusable plastic is the next category of contention.

We do save and reuse plastic bread bags and all sorts of other plastic containers. But almost everything, from cheese packaging to the sealing ring on top of a tub of butter is made of plastic and hence pretty much unusable after it has served its purpose. Amy and I discussed the idea of buying cheese from the deli, and then requesting a particular type of packaging. I suppose we could even bring our own. The one issue here is the only cheese "deli's" in town are at the grocers (two in town) and I am not sure they do anything but sliced cheese. We will dig into this a little bit and see if it is an option.

In the mean time we will be finishing off the miniature candy bars that we still have left over from Halloween, wondering if the stuff they are wrapped in is paper covered foil, foil covered plastic, or some other category of modern detritus.