Activity 1

My Household Waste Generation

My weekly record of the type and amount of garbage in our household.

Item Amount (Number, estimated volume or weight)

Plastic bags  About 4-6 bags per trip to the store, around 30 grams

Plastic bottles  0 plastic bottles

Plastic containers  5-10 varied plastic containers; depends on the

occasion, around 5 pounds

Glass bottles 0 glass bottles

Paper/carton  10-30 papers/cartons, about 10 pounds

Metal cans  2-4 cans per week, about 8 pounds

Wood 0 wood

Battery  1-2 batteries per month or more, 1-2 pounds

Cooking oil  About 4 cups of cooking oil per week, around 4-6
pounds

Food scraps  1-2 bowls of food scraps, 5-8 pounds

Kitchen and food waste  About 1 to maybe 2 semi-full plastic bags, about 7-
10 pounds

Detergent (How much detergent is used for washing 2-3 handful of powdered detergent per week, 3-4
clothes and dishes)  pounds

Others

Process Questions:
1. How much of the items were recyclable?
 Based on my table, about 40-50 items including paper/cartons, food waste, and
plastic can be recycled.
2.  Imagine how much waste your household generates in a year.
 According to my table, my household can generate approximately 430 kilograms
of waste per year.
3.  Where do you think all of your garbage ends up?
 According to what I know, most of our waste ends up in landfills and some are
burnt in incinerators.
4.  Is your data comparable to the graph presented in slide #7?
 I think its pretty close since food waste is the majority of our waste but for us,
paper comes second after food waste because we tend to use a lot of paper for
stuff. I myself use a lot of paper because I scribble on them.