Weekly Weigh-in 5: Normalization

WEIGH-IN

So this week, nothing at all that miraculous happened.  It was utterly and undeniably normal.  I had some tea that came in wrapping, ate one bar that came wrapped (at a volunteer event), used one cauliflower packaged in plastic, and had the normal accumulation of fruit stickers.

My total trash weighed in at 17 grams, or 0.04 lbs!

That's my lowest weight so far, which I'm stoked about. 

JOURNAL

As I said above, this week felt really normal. I didn't have anything that seemed to outrageously affect my trash.  This gives me hope that reducing my trash to nearly zero really is possible, since several things in my trash were really avoidable (like the bar and cauliflower wrappings).  Maybe soon I can start switching to a monthly weigh-in instead of weekly!

However, starting today, I am working two full weekends at ski school.  For the environment, it's pretty eco-friendly, but it's definitely possible to produce more waste in that environment and I'll need to prep to avoid it! Update on how it all went down next week.

Weekly Weigh In 3: Mermaid Hair

Weigh in:

So this week I did okay.  Ordering things for the school year has been killing me! If I couldn't find a book used (most of them I did) the new ones were all wrapped in plastic. I cut my hand and needed a band-aid, forgot to ask for no straw at a restaurant, finished my birth control packet, and got my hair dyed.

So my normal trash weighed in at 29 grams

My hair dye waste was less than I expected it to be, but still substantial:

1. Lightener: 4.4 oz = 125 g
2. Foil Sheets: 204 g
   • about 90 sheets weighing .005 lbs each = .45 lbs = 204 g
3. Colored Dye: 113 g
   • Approx. 2 oz of teal, 1 oz of purple, 1 oz of blue

So the total weight of my hair dying visit was: 442 g 

This means that my grand total trash this week was 471 grams, or about 1 lbs. This is the most I've had so far, but it was essentially because of dying my hair. 

Journal

This week went relatively smoothly. Getting my hair dyed produced the most trash that I've made in a while.  Most of it was aluminum, which isn't as bad as plastic, but because of the colorant that was on it the sheets couldn't be recycled.  I thought about taking them home, washing them, and then recycling them.  But I also didn't know if it was worse to rinse the colorant down the drain, or to send it to the landfill.  I went with landfill, but I would like to do some more research on hair products in general to see if my concerns were well founded.