One Day Challenge!
Ready to see how your garbage stacks up?
Garbology One Day Challenge Rules
- Grab a bag, bucket, or box to keep all your trash in. This will be your Collection Bag. It's easiest if it's a container you can carry around with you at all times. We also recommend a ziplock bag or other air-tight container for food trash.
- Starting from when you get up in the morning until bedtime that night, DO NOT throw away ANYTHING! (Ok, here's the exception...anything that might be a biohazard. This includes tissues from blowing your nose, toilet paper, etc. We know it's trash, but it's not really sanitary to carry that around with you, so go ahead and trash it.) Put everything that would normally go in the trash can, recycle bin, or compost pile into your Collection Bag.
- The next day, take all of your trash and sort it into 3 piles: Recycle, Compost, and Trash. Our definitions for those categories can be found elsewhere on this site.
- Write down every item in each category and describe it: type of material (like plastic or glass), number of items (if you have more than one Dr. Pepper can, for example), size of containers (like soda bottles or empty chip bags), etc.
- Weigh each category and write it down.
- Write down the following figures: Total Weight, Total # of Items, and Weight and # of Items for each category.
- When you've finished collecting your garbage data, take our Quiz to see how you measure up! You'll need all the figures listed in Step 6, so make sure you write them all down.