How much household trash do you produce?

I have to take a trip once a week to the dump.  It is not my trash but my families trash.

My wife and I might produce 2 bags of trash a month, maybe three if we make a Costco run to stock up on things.  We compost a lot and the chickens get quite a bit also.

I have a Daughter and our 2 grandkids living with us, separate living area,  (2-30 gallon trash cans a week),  walkout basement, and a Son with daughter-in-law and grandson living in an off grid cabin on our property, (1-40 gallon trash can a week and usually a box or two of other stuff.  They are trying at recycling much better that the daughter and I believe it is because they are off grid.

We, (wife and I), recycle everything we can.  I actually go to the recycle center in nearby town of Helena 4 times a year.

Try very hard to have the others recycle.  Maybe a 20 % recycle from them.  Separate bins for cans, glass items, plastics doesn't help much.  

Also doesn't help that they get so much "junk", ie: plastic toys and stuff.  We didn't gift to much "junk" to the kids when they were growing up, 1, we didn't have the $$ and 2, I was raised with useful gifts, books, homemade toys, things that would last and we wanted to pass that on to the kids.  (I still have some of the few store bought toys that were given to me as a child, well made.  I'm 72).

We wrapped gifts in the Sunday funnies.  Colorful paper and I remember reading the funnies again before opening gifts.

So how much trash do you produce?

We go to the dump about every 3 or 4 months.

I quit paying attention to how much is thrown away each week though when I paid attention it was about a grocery bag recycle into a trash bag.

There are no recycling centers anywhere around.

Dennis Barrow wrote:
Also doesn't help that they get so much "junk", ie: plastic toys and stuff.  We didn't gift to much "junk" to the kids when they were growing up, 1, we didn't have the $$ and 2, I was raised with useful gifts, books, homemade toys, things that would last and we wanted to pass that on to the kids.  (I still have some of the few store bought toys that were given to me as a child, well made.  I'm 72).

We wrapped gifts in the Sunday funnies.  Colorful paper and I remember reading the funnies again before opening gifts.

This is an interesting thread!!!
Ultimately we want to stop our subscription to the trash service (picking up our trash once every two weeks) alltogether, but are still too new on our property to be free from the supermarket - we are not yet self sufficient enough.

But; I'm super interested in learning about HOW people reduce their amount of trash, like in your post Dennis, you mention helpful, effective and fun solutions!
Growing our own food will cut out a lot of packaging material, but what are the other nifty ways to reduce trash - drastically?

Thanks for this thread!

One bag a month if we are careful. One bag a week if we are not.

I burn most of the trash I have....

After that I am left with 8 oz cans which I use to grow plants in...

Then I am left with lids of cans, and tuna cans which i have not found a good use for yet.

I make a recycling run (alongside a trapline of related errands) every week.

As to garbage, I stuff a dozen bags in the back of the Soul every 3-4 months. 2/3 is from the house, 1/3 from the shop. I guess we could do better, but since my neighbours take a pickup truck load every week I don't feel terribly naughty.

We have a smallish trash bag every 3-4 days, and same for recycle.  There are two of us.  We're not doing great, but we're not doing terrible either.  Hoping bokashi can slim that down a little bit, but I'm trying to think of realistic ways we can slim it down more.  Once we move and we have space we're getting bbokashi for leftover meat scraps etc.

we often talk about this- we are a household of 3 and have normal trash pickup 3x a week (urban area) and recycling 2x. I am amazed at how often my neighbors have huge amounts of trash out.
We put out one smallish bag (think plastic grocery shopping bag) every week, and one larger 50lb bag (dog food sack) full of recycling every other week.
Anything organic goes to the rabbits, dog, bokashi or compost. Our recycling program is really strong, and we don't do things like takeout where you end up with "spoiled" cardboard that can't be recycled.

We have almost no non-recyclable trash, the vast majority is poop from my large dog and bathroom waste (toilet paper can't go down the toilet here). If I had the land I would find workarounds for both of those things, but in my urban setting it's just not feasible.

I'm still pretty low on the Wheaton Eco-Scale but I have been making some progress.

Instead of a weekly 32 gallon trash can being put out on the curb, it has turned into a bi-weekly occurrence. Recycling has reduced as well, being able to hopefully be further reduced with some separating/processing of certain paper product into non-trash streams.

A big reducer of trash volume has been composting. My current compost setup needs some work as it isn't the best at handling the new volume that I am throwing at it but I am making it work. I dream of a three bay system but currently use a single pile.

My town got a new trash service and they gave out efuckingnourmous 95 gallons garbage and recycling cans.  Over 2024 I had a household average of 1.5 humans and I took those cans to the curb twice for the full year.  So that works out to around 4 gallons of trash and 4 gallons of recycling a week.  Some of my neighbors had to get a second garbage can cuz they were overflowing one each week.  24-48 times as much garbage as I generate...

About 3/4 of a bag a week, and about 1 bin of recycles: glass, paper, and #1 or #2 plastics.

I compost "dry" veggie leavings, but put in milk cartons "wet" ones, meat scraps, fats, and other food waste. We get vermin here and so I'm conservative about what I put in the compost. Until we had a closed pile, I didn't put anything but coffee grounds in it from Labor Day to Memorial Day as I didn't want to attract vermin & predators (we have < 1 acre). If we had chickens I'd give them most of it, but we don't.

Unless I've gone thru multiple boxes of old stuff and am doing a purge, we generate a full bag in about 1.5 weeks.

Recycling we've done in the past I miss? Glass bottles to the college with the glass blowing program. Nothing closer than 25 miles now....

Nina Surya wrote:

This is an interesting thread!!!
Ultimately we want to stop our subscription to the trash service (picking up our trash once every two weeks) alltogether, but are still too new on our property to be free from the supermarket - we are not yet self sufficient enough.

But; I'm super interested in learning about HOW people reduce their amount of trash, like in your post Dennis, you mention helpful, effective and fun solutions!
Growing our own food will cut out a lot of packaging material, but what are the other nifty ways to reduce trash - drastically?

Thanks for this thread!

We had trash service, 2 large cans twice a month.  But I am paying taxes for trash and we have a  trash drop off  about 6 road miles from us.  Problem is I hit the limit around January 1st and start getting bills after that, but usually under $20 a month. (My kids do give me a few bucks towards this).  Way cheaper than the trash service.  That was almost $300 a year.