Trash Talk

Yesterday G and I watched an interesting documentary on garbage. It was about a family that kept their garbage for 3 months to see what they consumed. This was a regular family living in an urban setting with two kids and a toddler. Now granted the film was dated (2007) and we watched an edited version of it I think because some of the topics shown in the trailer were not part of the TVO program we watched last night, but it still reinforced a lot of the issues we have with our own waste production.

My family tries to find ways to lessen our garbage. We use bins for grocery shopping and reusable produce bags for our fruits and veggies. We buy some meat from the farm which is wrapped in butcher paper instead of white foam trays and plastic wrap (though admittedly not all our meat comes this way and some of the meat from the farm comes in plastic bags). We try to use all the parts of the foods we buy -- I rarely peel our vegetables and I use the rinds of our lemons, oranges and limes in baking. But to be honest, we've started slacking lately so this is a good reminder why we need to reinforce the changes we've made and to even take thing a step further.

Ultimately, the biggest problem for us as a family is that we're consumers. We love to acquire things and more things and even more things. The girls have enough clothes to clothe at least two other children their size, I have more books then I'll ever read again, G's movie collection borders on the obscene and to be honest, every holiday in this house is celebrated with new stuff.

I need to be conscious of this and of the message it sends to my children. I need to be more aware of the distinction between need and want and more importantly, between a genuine investment want and an instant but empty gratification want. I need to make changes in the way I shop and make choices about the things I do buy. It's not easy for me, it'll be a constant struggle.

But if I don't even try why should I expect it from anyone else?