4 bags of trash per year
I looked down into the white abyss, a blanket covering the ground. Pure magic. Glittering, reflecting the sun rays back into the blue open skies. The Dolomites Mountains are truly a unique specimen of nature’s beauty. This is a UNESCO designated world heritage site.
Fuck, that’s a plastic bottle I see in the snow. No! It can’t be, and next to it a brown banana peal. From the chairlift, it was impossible to miss. Staring right at me, that piece of plastic shit. And more. I saw human selfishness. Utter disregard for what surrounds us. Not to mention no awareness as to our own responsibility to do the right thing. And in this case, it would require whoever this asshole was, to just take that plastic bottle and the banana peel to the next rifugio and put them up for disposal. Is this really so hard to do? Are we absolute morons as a species?
Sometimes the human race, and how we behave, drives me to my limits of patience and good will. By nature I am an optimist. And by nature I believe in the good in people, but acts like these make me question my own convictions. Am I delusional for thinking we can change human behavior? Is it a total illusion to believe that by promoting awareness and education, we can empower people to do the right thing? Or actually, has our instagram life and self admiration created a totally narcissistic society, and as a collective, we’ve stopped caring about anything other than me, my instant gratification and my dopamine fix?
So yah, I was a bit down on humanity last week. And wondering, truly, how to communicate basic sustainability and code of conduct to people that stopped giving a shit a long long time ago. What do you tell someone that’s tossing plastic bottles and banana peels off of a chairlift in a UNESCO park? Hey, you should really consider tracking your trash, so that you can know more about how much you are wasting and what you are wasting? Or fuck you, asshole?
Maybe if the act of caring for the planet becomes more instagrammable we’ll get somewhere. Or, the right response to an act like this is punitive, which brings me to an interesting initiative in waste management that has been rolled out here in Trentino region of Italy — pay as you throw, and pay a lot. It costs you 12 Euros for each time you scan yourself into the trash bin. And that’s the only place you can deposit your trash — at the public waste collection point. The municipality no longer collects trash from your home. They do pick up recycling on the other hand. And It doesn’t matter whether you throw out a little or a lot. It’s always 12 euros per throw.
And guess what, people are reducing the amount of trash they produce. I spoke to my landlord, a local theater and arts professional from Primiero. And I asked him: so, how much is your annual trash bill? He owns a beautiful rustic chalet, an old barn house redone sitting on a green pasture overlooking the valley of Pale di San Martino.
But what he said was even more interesting — I only throw trash out 4 times a year. We hardly produce any. Just back from my trips to waste centers in New York and the landfill in Austin TX, I couldn’t believe it. What do you mean 4 times a year, do you mean a week? No. And again, he repeated, we throw the trash out 4 times a year, and we produce almost none. How, I ask?
Recycling devotedly, was one answer. But we also compost uncompromisingly. And most importantly, we’ve become extremely conscientious about what we consume and how we shop. And is this new for you, I investigated further? Did the money penalty, for that’s really what it amounts to, this new law, help you change your behavior around trash? A little, he said, but mostly we were doing it already before.
And what about your friends, I asked him? How much trash do they produce? About the same, maybe slightly more, he said.
I did a rough calc in my head. If you throw your trash out 100 days per year, which is roughly what happens in an average US or European household, it comes out to 3.7 times a week and 44 euros. In a year, you’ll now spend 2309 euros on trash in Trentino. That’s a lot. You can get a lot for that money, a dope road bike for one. A trip to Europe from the US or vice versa, another.
And were your friends always careful with their waste, I asked lastly. Not really, he replied. They started being more careful because they don’t want to pay the 12 euros. They feel totally offended by what in essence is a high tax for being an asshole to mother nature, I thought.
Will this be the new normal, a high fee for your trash? Probably not. But the billing system for waste, like so many other things around waste, has to be modernized. Because fortunately or unfortunately, people still respond well to perception of value, and the only other perception of value outside of Insta posting is money — in more exact terms, how much am I losing vs how much I could be earning?
The Binit household waste tracking device was not designed around monetary rewards. We baked in an awareness loop that forces you to compete against yourself. While a financial approach certainly has a role and a place, we know that if we can make you understand how your performance looks over time, you are just competitive enough to want to improve, week on week, year on year. And in the end, we’ll lead you to the same place where Michele is today, 4 bags of trash per year.
It’s vanity. We don’t like to know that we are not what we pretend we are — sustainable. And we don’t like to know that we are performing worse than our friends and neighbors. Also when it comes to trash. Because it sucks to look in the mirror knowing, black on white, that you are the problem.
As for the asshole who threw that plastic bottle in the snow under the Scandola chairlift. Look in the mirror, and see the monster staring back at you. You are the problem.
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