All my trash for a year fit into two plastic bags

I suspect that e.g. living in a smaller house or apartment, driving less and driving a smaller vehicle (more generally, living in an urban area with less pavement and other infrastructure per capita compared to suburbs), better insulating buildings (or constructing them with other passive heating/cooling) and scaling back the temperature control, using less hot water or heating it less, reducing water use on yards/landscaping, reducing use of energy-intensive gadgets (e.g. drying clothes on a line, using a smaller television), consuming less meat and dairy, buying local vegetables in season instead of shipped thousands of miles, and otherwise eating more canned food and recycling the cans, taking local vacations vs. traveling internationally, etc. might have more effect than explicitly trying to optimize only for quantity of personal trash generated.

One problem with our current economy is that our prices do a terrible job at signaling true costs, and the whole system is so complex that any individual person has almost no chance at guessing correctly, if trying to organize their life to reduce external impact. (So much of the price we pay is distorted by some clever company arbitraging international tax differences, cheating regulatory controls, defrauding poor countries and bribing their officials to cover it up, or dumping unlimited toxic shit in places without any oversight.)

It’s like trying to optimize code without a profiler.

As one small example, I’d love to see some kind of systemic analysis of the comparative environmental costs of ordering something online and having it delivered in a truck from a warehouse wrapped in cardboard and then recycling the cardboard vs. driving a single person in a large car to and from a store 10 miles away, including the land and energy costs of keeping inventory in the local stores, employing the cashiers, etc. Personally I little idea what the total impacts are of these two choices.

That's pretty gross. What's the delta for the energy cost of doing that, its use of extra water and extra heat and extra soap for the water to clean his hand, with the energy cost of a few squares of toilet paper and less water and heat and soap?

The problem isn't the person trying to consume less, it's everyone else. Everywhere you go (in NYC) you get bombarded with packaging. Going to get a cup of coffee involves a paper cup, a plastic lid, 5 napkins, and then they throw it all in a brown paper bag. I've seen people buy a soda at the bodega and with it comes napkins, a straw, both in a brown bag and then all of that in a plastic bag! I watch in horror the person pull the can out, throw everything else away, drink the can and then toss that out too.

I start to wonder how far removed we all are from the landfills and production to be completely oblivious to this insane level of waste. The worst part about it is that when you repeatedly say "no bag, thank you" you get looked down upon like some loony toon who can't function in society correctly.

I made a few exceptions. I couldn’t always control other people’s behavior, so junk mail wouldn’t count as my own recycling. I wasn’t going to be a boor and instruct a dinner-party host on how to reduce his or her trash. And if someone gave me a gift — a token offered from the heart — I accepted it. Also, I was working on my aerospace engineering Ph.D. in an experimental combustion lab, and my research required many single-use materials: Mylar, latex gloves, ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (milk carton material), optical cleaning wipes and so on. If I wanted to conduct quality research and finish my dissertation, I’d have to separate requirements inside the lab from my habits outside it.

So, his junk mail, social life and job/education did not count. I wonder how much those things account for the typical 1500 pounds annually and how much trash he "produced" that way without counting it.

I started composting a year or so ago. Not little barrels or bins or anything like that. I wanted to the compost to get hot and be able to really bury green kitchen wastes so animals didn't pull it out. So every few months I have been buying a large (500-600 pound) bale of ruined moldy hay ($10 at a hay yard near here). I cut the strings and fluff the hay up with a pitchfork. Then I add a quart or so of fertilizer and wet it. Then I pile it into a cone and wet it again. The cones are about 5 feet tall initially with maybe a 5-6 foot diameter base. I keep my eyes open for any additional organic matter I can add. All the weeds, leaves, grass clippings... I even added some tall weeds I cut from the roadside this summer.

We bury anything compostable in the pile. All vegetable scraps, paper plates, paper towels, cardboard egg cartons, paper towel and toilet paper rolls, I even put in a couple of big (non-shiny) cardboard boxes that were completely consumed. About twice a month I turn the pile over. As the pile starts breaking down and shrinking to the point it doesn't really heat up anymore I start another one. At the end I have a tiny little pile of compost maybe 2.5 feet cubed. It's amazing how much all that stuff breaks down. It's a lot of work but the compost is really great for the lawn and gardens. I couldn't buy something of similar quality. I estimate it's cut our trash by about 1/3 and importantly it also keeps most organic matter out of the trash which makes it less stinky (we don't eat much meat and the dogs help with the scraps from the little we do). Composting is a lot of fun. It's like farming microbes.