DALLAS, Ore.- Amy Korst makes the short walk from her front door to the recycling bin. It's packed to the rim and she has to jam it down to make room for the new load of stuff going in. It's day 364 in what started out as a joke to live trash-free for a year.
"We learned a lot along the way," says the high school teacher who gives herself and her husband an A minus for their efforts so far with being Guinea pigs in their living experiment.
"I think we're probably going to continue living this way," says her husband Adam who works as a photographer for the local newspaper in rural Polk County, Oregon.
Their rules to on garbage: kitty litter and meat scraps go in the actual trash bin for sanitary purposes. Everything else that would be headed to a landfill go into a small box a bit bigger than a shoe box that is now full. It weights roughly four pounds. That's all the trash the two of them have generated in a year. The average American couple produces about twice that much in a single day.
So, what's in that box of trash? Strange odds and ends, for certain. There's a styrofoam cup that held a mocha earlier this year. "This was a Styrofoam cup from teacher appreciation week at the high school I work in. Personal connections are important- so I wouldn't begrudge this kind of trash at all." A balloon hat someone gave her randomly, a dog squeaky toy that encountered their lawn mower's blades, a hospital bracelet.
Amy holds up a small ziplock bag with blue glass shards inside. "This is a broken Christmas ornament," she explains. "Our cat knocked it off the tree."
Only one piece of Christmas wrapping paper is in the box. That's in part due to the support of family and friends who wrapped presents in ribbons, newspaper, cloth-- anything except typical store-bought wrapping paper.
Their most important mantra in their success at not generating trash is actually a very simple one: watch what you buy in the first place.
"If anyone makes one simple change, buy things in recyclable packaging and think and check before you bring it into your house how you're going to get rid of it. You get into a rhythm and, it's really easy."
Some of the other keys to their success that you can try as well: buying a lot of items in bulk and bringing their own containers, buying things locally that come in general with less packaging, and seeing their modest garden in their Dallas, Oregon rental-- growing things themselves to which come with no packaging at all.
Amy Korst has no formal training as an environmental advocate. She did take the Master Recycler classes offered in a neighboring county. This recently awarded "teacher of the year" shared her lessons with her students, with complete strangers on her blog and across the country with an appearance on CNN.
"This has been an amazing experience," she says. "This has given me as an average person a voice into something I really care about."
Her husband, Adam, is fully on board with the experiment now. His first misgivings surrounded snack food. Because until recently it didn't come in recyclable packaging-- it was off limits at first.
"We found bulk chips. Yup, bulk chips and bulk Cheetos. And Sunchips came out with a biodegradable bag."
That Sunchips bag is somewhere in the wire column in the backyard that serves as a cold compost pile. In time, things inside this five foot high wire tube will become garden compost.
The year has not been a normal one for the couple. They both had severe flu earlier this year, allergies have been horrible this spring. Due to budget cutbacks in her district, Amy, as low person on the totem pole, was laid off from her teaching job. And the couple managed to stay nearly trash-free while moving across town. They credit many boxes and recyclable paper tape that can be found in most office supply stores. Their new rental is slightly larger, but closer in town so her husband's commute to work is a two block walk. Their raised garden beds are even something they brought with them to the new house, putting the wood frames in the truck to move to the new place.
What was an odd curiosity for friends, family and co-workers has turned into admiration and inspiration. Adams says one of his co-workers used to be a shop-a-holic and has changed their ways somewhat now.
"We feel like we've already made an impact on what we've already done," he says. "It's a nice snowball effect," chimes in Amy.
What's next for the couple? They plan on keeping going with living nearly trash-free. Amy says it just became a new way of life, shortly after we first brought you the couple's story a month into their experiment. Amy plans on keeping up with her blog that generates about a thousand hits a day on average while she's looking for a new job. They might relocate again, the photographs in their living room of lighthouses and the surf at the gorgeous Oregon coast at sunset give some clues to where they might end up.
No matter what, living in their own experiment has changed them forever-- and they wont be going back to what the rest of us would consider normal anytime soon.
"Anytime I think about going back it’s repulsive honestly," says Adam. "I barely even think of what we're doing anymore, it's become so easy and second-nature."
