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Keeping a Year's Worth of Trash in Your Apartment
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by Jordan Yerman | December 30, 2007 at 11:43 am
871 views | 30 Recommendations | 4 comments
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Ari Derfel, a small business owner in the San Francisco Bay Area, decided to keep every article of trash he generated for a whole year...
The project started out as an experiment - to see just how much waste one person generates in a year (in Derfel's case, about 96 cubic feet). But as the months rolled by and Derfel's refuse overflowed from his kitchen pantry and into bins in the living room, the project grew from novelty into an environmental statement, a source of much discussion and debate, and a three-dimensional diary of Derfel's consumption habits (not to mention a source of many, many jokes).Sometime soon, Derfel hopes to transfer custody of the detritus to an artist who will use it to create a piece about the way Americans deal with their castoffs.
"When we throw something away, what does 'away' mean?" said Derfel. "There's no such thing as 'away.' "
Still, the act of observing changes that which is observed: Derfel's daily habits changed as a result of the encroaching trash, and he likely began to generate less and less waste as space grew scarce, whereas a "normal" resident would have carried on consuming and tossing without thinking twice about it.
Personally, I cook from scratch (not much storage space in my gaff for lots of packaging), and so don't generate much waste-- during the four-month garbage strike in Vancouver I was more or less okay, and not reduced to storing trash in my freezer.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 23:16 on December 30th, 2007
jordan, interesting project. I am always amazed by all the package stores sell you food in. Its like they think you are taking it to the Moon and it needs to be air tight, water proof,...
at 03:44 on December 31st, 2007
jordan, I like this story. I'm wondering about the smell of that thing cumulating in the living room, if it was even able to call "living" room, after a few weeks / months. After a few hours the diapers in the trash has "quite" a smell, which is currently common in our household.
at 04:10 on December 31st, 2007
Nice story, jordan - Good stuff.
I'm sure I've seen TV programs though where people undertaking this kind of "project" have it unceremoniously removed by council officials. Did he get some kind of exemption from Health & Safety?
at 05:55 on December 31st, 2007
If the East Bay is still as I remember, he probably just flew under the radar...