Where did all the garbage (cans) go?
August 26, 2011 by Molly Budinsky
Here at the 16th best place to work, ever*, we recycle. We built a custom recycling bin system so we can more efficiently sort our stuff before an awesome local company comes to pick it up, we have a dishwasher instead of paper coffee cups, and we even have a colony of worms chewing up our organic waste and turning it into compost for our flower beds.
But we still had garbage cans. Lots of them. One under every single desk in the office. When I walked around and counted, there were 28 — 1.3 waste receptacles for every employee working here. It took a couple of seconds to realize that was too many.
Nobody really likes throwing stuff away. Even people who aren’t hung up on the environmental impacts of the cycle of stuff cringe at the thought of overflowing landfills, and our employees were no exception. But we all had a place just an arm’s reach away where things we didn’t want any more could disappear, and we were all guilty of using it too often.
So I took everybody’s trashcans away.
Not having to get up and walk to a trash can to throw something away makes it a mindless task, but it’s one we should be thinking about. Sitting at your desk deep in thought and focused on a deadline, it’s easy to absent-mindedly throw away something recyclable for a pretty silly reason: avoiding taking 10 steps down the hall. It boils down to this: garbage is already too-far removed from our consciousness. Too easy to forget what it means to throw something "away". Having an opportunity to do so every 10 feet in a building only makes that disconnect more possible.
Will fewer garbage cans mean less garbage? Will it mean thinking more about what we are throwing away? Will it make us recycle and compost more? Will it change what we buy, eat, and use? I’m pretty hopeful that it will.
Of course, even if our habits are not so easily broken, this office will be sending about 25 fewer small plastic trashcan liners to the landfill each week when the office is cleaned, and that feels pretty good.
*you know, the royal ever. As in, for 2011 only.