Garbage Free At Last!!

Just like safety, practicing sustainable living starts in the home, or at least that’s the case for Sarah and Kyle McGaughey.

Check out their blog, ‘Say No to Trash’.

The McGaughey’s have a goal to not produce any garbage for a month, after already having only produced one bag of garbage in all of 2005.

Now that’s what I call sustainable!

It’s easy enough for us to say we care about the environment, but much harder to practice what we preach.

Which is exactly why the McGaughey’s are a great example of what can be done with a little willpower and by paying close attention to the products that they purchase.

One problem that the McGaughey’s face in their quest towards garbagelessness is that so many products (like dental floss and beer caps) are not recyclable.

Germans are known for their green policies as well as for their frugality. So when they started to have to pay for their trash, they also started to demand that grocery stores sell only recyclable items to save on waste.

When some grocery stores refused to comply, many Germans did the most logical thing…they brought the garbage right back to the grocery store, forcing them to swallow the bill for the waste.

Needless to say, the grocery stores soon demanded that distributors only produce recyclable items for their stores.

Now, under the new Green Dot system, companies have to fork over the dough to reduce waste by carrying mainly recyclable products and by paying for any excess packaging.

It’s good that the McGaughey’s have decided to take it upon themselves to reduce their total waste to nothing! But it would be even better if businesses would look to the recycling model of Germany and start carrying only recyclable products.

Something to push for.