That magical "away" is here to stay.

When people ask me about myself, without hesitation I tell them "I really love garbage." Which is usually followed by a blank stare and awkward laugh as they try and size up if I'm being sarcastic. Recently, I've been able to squash that outright as I pull out my phone and start showing them pictures of my field trip to the county landfill.

Yes folks, while my witty musing of rubbish may match my petite and rambunctious exterior, I am in fact a poker-faced trash junkie and serious garbage blogger.

So let's go deep into the bowels of the waste management beast where few and far between ever manage to lay their innocent trash producing eyes. That mysterious and elusive "away". The magical and astonishingly engineered hole that is a landfill.

Finding a landfill is no easy task. Even Google maps was a little confused as how to get there. Mapquest had a more direct route. I know, hearsay! After taking the highway a bit out of town, we got off at one of those exits that don't have a name, or really even a sign. We followed a road that looked like it lead to no where in particular. It was about half way up the hill that we saw a giant barbwire fence and a sign that you were entering the county landfill and lets just say it wasn't a Vegas style "Welcome" sign. 

Once we're up to the top of the windy road we were suddenly surrounded by trucks waiting in line to get weighed. At this point I'm a little bummed. It just looked like the entrance to a national park. A little booth, trees, birds, a food truck....it didn't even smell! 

 Trucks waiting in line to get weighed. The landfill takes in about 1,200 tons of trash per day. Trucks are weighed and then pay a "dumping fee" based on the weight. 

After explaining to multiple people who we were and why we were there, to check out the waste audit the City had commissioned to asses our recycling outreach needs and general geeking out, the landfill manager came to get us. Martin, our tour guide & garbage-ian angel. We got in his over sized pickup and began our journey to the "top" of the landfill.

 Waiting for our ride

 On our way to the top! Little did we realize we were already standing on several hundred feet of compacted garbage.

Driving on several hundred feet of compacted trash and dirt. 

 Well, trashers and trashies alike..this is what an actual landfill looks like:

Yea..I know! a little disappointing. 

It was the end of the day, so they were covering up the landfill with "alternative daily cover" Which is waste management speak for, mulch, essentially. 

All of the yard trimmings brought to the landfill are ground up and cover each and every speck of trash, every day. This prevents birds and animals from digging around, mitigates smell and helps stabilize each layer. -hashtag- engineering

Even though it was February the whole landfill smell like Christmas trees!
Fun Fact: in the City I work for, residents can't put palm fronds in with their yard trimmings because this very grinder can't handle the strong, fibrous frond. 

After our tour of the open section, Martin (who has been working at landfills for 30 years, at this particular one for 18), showed us the methane collection and erosion control for the landfill.

Each pipe designates the top of a layer. Each layer is about 250 feet tall. 

They use "telescoping pipes" so that the pipes can expand and contract with the the temperature. This prevents explosions. 

We are sitting on "lift" (layer) 6 or 7. The top is lift 9.

This landfill has been open for a little over 50 years. It's one of 5 major landfills in the greater Los Angeles area.

Because this landfill is so old, it isn't lined. Which means there is no protective barrier under the landfill to protect water from leachate. They do collect the methane and pipe it to the City power plant - so they do their best for the environment considering there's no way to create a barrier under the hundreds and hundreds of feet of trash already piled. However, ground water is closely monitored and tested to try their best at mitigating the pollution and chemicals leaking from the landfill.

Landfills are incredibly engineered and complex (especially new ones). My expertise at the moment is limited to this graphic I have never claimed to be an engineer! 

Landfills are a necessary evil. They are sensational and most definitely not going anywhere. We will always need landfills to make our unwanted, refugee refuse a place to call home. They make it possible for capitalism to rear its indulgence-loving head. Throwing stuff out makes it possible for us to buy new, bigger, shinier, very well packaged goods of all kinds.

The landfill I saw accepts municipal solid waste (think waste you and your favorite restaurant produce) and construction & demolition debris (think asphalt, lumber and dirt). Yet there are all kinds of landfills. They would never let a civilian walk onto a hazardous waste landfill not like I would want to...which is even more engineered and carefully monitored for leaks but they exist all over the country.

Landfills, regardless of the kind have the grave potential to decimate ground water and land stability for surrounding communities, are disproportionately situated near low income neighborhoods and are a for-ev-er said like that kind from Sandlot reminder of our over consumption.

There is a common joke that one day we'll be mining landfills for valuable resources (metal, plastic, paper). Two garbologists from 'The Garbage Project' who have taken core samples of landfills have found perfectly intact newspapers and half eaten hotdogs. ew. They concluded we weren't burying trash, we were mummifying it.

In fact one of the biggest by volume things sent to the landfill is CARDBOARD. Guys. For real. Cardboard. The number one most recyclable-Lorax-relateable-reusable thing that humans make! Minus maybe pizza boxes but they're their own class of confusing. If that's not a case for recycling - I don't know what is.

My lesson learned from my glorious day at the landfill was that we will ALWAYS make waste and will ALWAYS need a place to put it. However, individual impact is making a difference. Martin, the landfill manager, said that over his 30 years in the landfill business he has seen a drastic decrease in the amount of material coming up for them to put "away".

So don't lose hope trashers! Fighting the good fight may not look like a winning battle, but it is adding up!

Till next time...

Meanwhile in Southern California...

With heavy rains this past week in Southern California and more expected for the next few months. El Nino's wrath has surely been felt on recycling, yard waste and landfill bins combined.

LA County is suggesting keeping containers out of the gutters to prevent run away bins. However, it doesn't look like there was any stopping this little guy from his epic adventure!

Except maybe that pothole...

Shake, Fold!

If you haven't discovered TED talks yet... what internet rock have you been under... here is a short introduction into the wonderful world of TED...

I've chatted about paper towel waste before but this video so perfectly explains the most environmentally sound way to dry your hands that Trashers from all walks of life have to bare witness! And let's be honest, this old man is adorable... 

Joe Smith is described as a "powerful paper towel advocate" on his TED Bio page. According to Smith we currently use 13 billion pounds of paper towels each year. If we reduce our paper towel use by one paper towel, per person, per day we would decrease that number to 571,230,000 lbs per year. Numbers make everything so legitimate. Which is an incredible amount towards decreasing trees being cut down to make paper towels and the amount of landfill space towel waste takes up!

I'm still in the "no paper towels. period." camp, but it's nice to know when hand dryers ...or my pant legs... aren't an option, that this now exists as a #TrashGirlSolution in my trash-less brain. Dorky trash puns, I could go all day. 

Lesson of the day: Shake, Fold folks! Shake and Fold.

A FroYo Fix

Last week I had a #TrashGirlProblem that I just can't shake...and it may or may not be solved by eating as much frozen yogurt as possible while I mull it over...

I have a long standing relationship with frozen yogurt. Spring semester of my Junior year of college, a business called The Frosty Parrot opened up just steps away from campus. It was love at first taste—  colorful, customizable, affordable and down right delicious. Frozen yogurt became my weekly and sometimes bi and tri weekly event that year. But like any lover caught with their trousers down or, with a plastic spoon in their mouth, my first love Trash caught me by surprise when he pointed out the overstuffed trashcans full of one time use FroYo bowls. It wasn't until I came to LA that another low impact trasher I met at a panel provided the love triangle counseling session I needed.

Less than a week after my counseling session I was having a FroYo kind of day. You know those days, where the world tries to tear you down and your roommate put his recyclables in the wrong bin..AGAIN and your only solace in the cold, dark recesses of the dumpster that is your day is the bright cheer of a self serve yogurt shop...Armed with my own carefully selected Harry Potter Butterbeer Mug & spoon I headed into my local YogurtLand for a low impact, high sugar, treat.

The idea was easy:
1. weigh my bowl prior to yogurt and toppings selection
2. fill my cup with frozen bliss
3. subtract weight of bowl from final weight. Go Math! 

Easy, simple! Right?

Nope.

Not only did the cashier have a hard time understanding what I was asking her to do, she told me the "scales don't work like that." They automatically subtract the weight of the disposable paper cup from the overall weight. My awesome HP Mug was going to be heavier and would therefore cost more than their cup.

What the crap technology! 

At least I brought my spoon... 

Would I need to give up self serve frozen yogurt to lessen my environmental impact? File that under: questions Google was made for. 

Some FroYo establishments are already cleaning up their act by offering bowl alternatives or discounts to their customers who bring their own. FroYo joints in Austin, Portland, of course, the hipsters are showing everyone up, San Francisco, San Diego and British Colombia, Canada all have frozen yogurt places that offer reusable bowls on site. A "for here" option similar to what coffee shops do with their reusable mugs.

Blogger FroYo Girl (man, there really is a blog for everything) bought this cool FroYo bowl at a shop in Palo Alto, CA that gives a discount for bringing your own.

Totally digging the Monsters Inc vibe

Other ways of "greening" FroYo are the options for recycling or composting the cups & spoons. However, recycling only works if the town the business is in collects plastic lined paperboard cups (that's what FroYo cups are) and not all do. However, even more restrictive is the fact that the cups are contaminated with food waste. Most recycling centers don't accept any recyclable materials with food residue and the plight of the pizza box continues... 

Compostable cups & spoons are only any good if the town has the facility to compost it. The cups and spoons will degrade more quickly in a landfill than if they were plastic but it still gets thrown "away" like any other garbage. The whole point of making it compostable (to let it biodegrade back into soil) is lost! 

So we're back at square one: reusable bowls.

I went back to my own YogurtLand and did a little research. Their cup, empty was .41 oz. My spectacular Harry Potter mug was 3.7 oz which would equate to an extra $1.66 on top of how much yogurt I bought. One of my plastic tupperware containers weighed .5 oz which would add $0.21 to my over all frozen yogurt. Much more manageable, like a sustainable yogurt tax but not as cool as my HP mug..

Left: My superb HP mug, made for FroYo indulging 

Right: Yogurtland's paperboard cup 

Typical tupperware container 

 Now as a reminder this is a straight trash blog- for the sake of simplicity and truly diving in to a deep understanding of how, what and why we consume I am ignoring the Life Cycle Assesment (LCA) that can be done between reusable and disposable items. In my world, reusable is always Thor, the strong, reliable brother & single use is always Loki, the evil annoying brother who just won't die! 

According to YogurtLand their "eco friendly" practice is their new re-usable spoons. But the spoon is a LIE! Those spoons go into the trash just like any other single use plastic spoon would. 

Like most frozen yogurt chains YogurtLand is a franchise. According to their franchise FAQ's, "supplies are purchased from approved vendors," meaning that YogurtLand, and their franchisees could instill more sustainable practices by implementing in-house reusable bowls or discounts to those who bring their own. There was even a change.org petition to YogurtLand CEO to design reusable cups so folks could do just that. 

Frozen yogurt joints as well as most other grab n go businesses haven't been as environmentally sound as they could be. But they seem to be working on it slowly. When I asked the employee to weigh my empty cups for this post he replied, "We can't do that, yet". Yet?! There's hope! 

Rethinking reusable bowls would not only lessen FroYo shops environmental impact, but would improve their overall bottom line by reducing operational costs and catering to a growing conscious consumer base. Until then, trashing less starts with the trasher herself. I am willing to take the 21 cent hit for my soul renewing frozen delicacy. Hey, what can I say? I like my yogurt frosty! ! 

I will eat FroYo in the name of science or Trash any day! 

Sadly Solo

You know you have a trash problem when your friends send you things like this on a regular basis...

Look out in the next week for the first in a series of blog posts on how we diverted over 10,000 solo cups from a landfill!

Superfluous: extra

I went to a swanky networking event last week empowering women to be more financially literate. It was hosted by Personal Capital at a very nice event space on the East River. So nice, that the paper towels in the ladies room became a topic of discussion for a hot minute among the women at the event.

These were by far the nicest hand towels I had ever seen. I almost didn't want to throw it away! They were thick, plush, personalized and definitely pricey. And, they were all in the trash. What else are you supposed to do with a paper towel, even the overtly fancy kind?

Maybe if I hadn't gotten bombarded in the ladies room by one of the tipsy event hosts, or a glass or two into the night myself, I would have stashed a few in my bag to test how long I could have used one paper towel before it finally gave way. But alas, living and learning.

Swanky. Can you feel it's thickness?

Swanky or not, paper towel waste is of real concern for us Trashers. Not only does it consume a tremendous amount of trees but it also plays into the larger water pollution problems associated with paper mills and takes up an immense amount of landfill space.

Now I'm sure everyone has seen these stickers at least once on a paper towel dispenser:

The blog claims to have reduced 29% of paper consumption since 2007. That's HUGE when you look at his other stats about how many fast food restaurants, coffee shops and restaurants there are in America. I mean, how many paper towels do YOU take when you dry your hands? What I like about the stickers is that it reminds us that our use is not the beginning of where the paper towels came from. Our consumption is such a habit that we don't think twice about the impact that habit is having.

An even better solution to paper towel waste can be found at one of the Brooklyn Starbucks:

"High speed energy efficient hand dryers are now being used instead of paper towels. 

One tone of paper consumes 17 trees, three cubic yards of landfill space and pollutes 20,000 gallons of water. 

I know it's blurry. There was a super long line for the bathroom and I didn't want to be "that girl" who stayed in forever even though everyone already heard me use the hand dryer. I really love and appreciate 2 things about this sticker over the "These Come from Trees" stickers. First, this approach is a much friendlier consumer side solution. While the "These come from Trees" stickers do a great job about serving as a personal reminder about where the paper towels come from... and guilt you momentarily into grabbing one instead of two towels ...you're still using paper towels. You're still cutting down trees for a single use item that will end up in landfill. However, the hand dryers remove the entire life cycle of a paper towel*. In the long run hand dryers are better for our environment and better for Starbucks bottom line.

Second, kudos to Starbucks for really making an effort to 'green up' their operation. They get a lot of slack for a lot of reasons, but they've recently been working on improving their massive ecological footprint and they deserve recognition for it.

*Now we can argue the LCA (life cycle analysis) of paper towels vs. high efficiency hand dryers till we are waist deep in sea level rise-- but this blog is about straight trash. So for the sake of a simplicity, I'm in the hand dryer's corner.

I think my biggest issue with the event spaces fancy paper towels is that I didn't even have an option for a hand dryer. It was either use the paper towel or go back to my networking event with soggy hands Oh, don't mind my hands- no they aren't sweaty, I just didn't want to use the unnecessarily fancy towels in the bathroom.

Morally Ambiguous Trash

In High School, my friend Jenn (with 2 n's) got me a coffee table book simply titled "TRASH" (a product of Alphabet City) for my birthday. In it is an assortment of trash art projects and articles written on our moral and inherent connection with trash. In the introduction, John Knechtel, the books editor, writes, "We are embedded in our own trash- there is no easy way to leap beyond it and build a utopia without garbage, to address the contradiction between the worlds resources and our seemingly unlimited ability to manufacture trash." Whoa. We are connected to our stuff for its value to us at any given moment.

In the book there is a essay titled, "The Ethical Artifact: On Trash" by Barry Allen. Not only are Allen's elegant descriptions of trash mesmerizing, Now performing Off-Broadway, The 'Incidental Utility & Enduring Trash' and next month, 'Quotidian Refuse' but he shows how interconnected we are to our own trash and how trash is dependent on its connectivity to other trash. In other words, anything you own is one burnt out light bulb or crack or missing piece away from becoming trash.

That's true for most items, especially electronic ones, which is Allen's main thesis. Our Trash is becoming more technological and therefore more interconnected to each other. For example, your computers ability to function is dependent on not only the hard drive working, but the screen, keys and battery. Once one of those breaks, the entire computer becomes essentially...Garbage. He calls Trash our "limit of knowledge." When we don't know what to do with something once it has served its single purpose- we throw it away.

In regards to technology, where things can more likely be repaired than not, he has this to say, "The gesture of repair is a refusal to admit that are technology and knowledge have reached their limit, that no more can be made, no more done, with a thing. It's like refusing to let a person die." Double whoa. Is calling the Geek squad to fix my computer the same as keeping a loved one on life support? 

Allen likens trash to human mortality several times in his essay. He goes on to talk about how trash has a level of care associated with it- that even when something is no longer useful to us, we still care enough to dispose of it in some way. If we didn't, we would have houses full of unusable items. I don't know how I feel about likening the disposal of my Chinese take out containers to burying my Grandfather. Does this mean we should liken littering to murder and recycling to reincarnation? Deep. 

My biggest question after reading Allen's article is if we care so deeply about our Trash, why do people not have a more vested interest in what happens to it? We don't "throw away" our loved ones- even though we bury them just like we bury our trash. What if instead of landfill, we called it a Garbage graveyard? Do we have a moral obligation to care more for the trash we do produce? Or, like some countries are producing less children, an obligation to produce less trash?


Allen thinks it is impossible to become trashless, but to, "make trash for which we can care. What matters is not trash per se but its cost. The best trash is trash we are prepared to care for." It's not just about waste management but being conscientious of what we are using and being sensitive to the objects that mean so much to us for such a short period of time.

So how will you treat your Trash?