This past assignment to collect a weeks worth of trash gave me a new insight on ways to live more sustainably. Throughout the course of the week I noticed that much of my trash was food containers because I don’t have a kitchen in my living space. Although I only kept a few containers because the other ones started to smell seeing all the plastic and styrofoam restaurants use to package food amazed me. As the week went on I tried to pull back on my use of things such as cotton buds, tissues, tea bags, paper towels, wipes, etc. Personally before this project I thought I lived pretty sustainably due to my family buying all our groceries from the farmers market, carefully recycling, and growing our own herbs. However as the trash piled up I realized it is much harder to live sustainably while living on your own. For the actual piece I took a box that was shipped to me that contained puffed plastic bags to keep the items safe. I put most of the trash in the box and layered the plastic bags on top. The other components of the piece were made up of trash such as a tea bag, an empty face cream container, and cut up pieces of food wrappers. I manipulated much of the trash to create a scenario that looked like a miniature sculpture of a dinner spread. The main idea of this concept was to try and make the trash look “cute” such as a mini diorama. As a whole this project opened my eyes up to how much waste just one human makes in a week and I will definitely be more responsible and cut down my amount of trash I produce.
