I am back with the results, and I have to say that doing this experiment made me very self-conscious of how much waste I generated and how much energy it took to produce the waste.

Just for some background information, this was a very average day where I hung around at home, then went to the mall with a friend (hi Anjali! — I just love mentioning my friends, don’t I :D) for a few hours. I chose to record everything on this particular day because I thought it would best represent what my average summer waste production, but during school days I usually generate a bit just because I usually eat school lunch and drive to after school activities…

The things I recorded were water consumption, electricity, material waste (paper, plastic, etc). I counted food, too, but only the leftovers I threw out and amount of water that it took to produce it. The wrappings of my purchases that I recycled and threw away count. If you have any suggestions on how to improve my records please let me know.

However, I did not count the amount of energy that it took to produce the waste and the fuel required to ship everything because I simply could not find it on the Internet. If any of you guys do, please let me know too!

WATER

Water was definitely the easiest resource to research because the Internet has been going crazy over water consumption due to ongoing droughts. Before you exit this page muttering “This person is insane, these numbers are too far too large to be true,” please be aware that I did not make up these figures myself. It took me about an hour and a half to find these stats and recalculate them to fit the amount that I consumed.

My “Immediate” Uses

Toilet flushes: 1 gallon

Sink: 8.6 gallons

Shower: 40 gallons

My “Indirect” Uses

.5 gallon drinking water

1.5 cup of Cheerios: 35 gallons

0.75 cup of milk: 125 gallons

.25 cup of nuts: 16 gallons

Medium-sized salad: 15 gallons

.5 cup of Auntie Anne’s pretzel nuggets: 26 gallons

Starbucks Tall Matcha Latte: 52 gallons

0.25 cup of rice: 212 gallons

1 cup of cabbage: 80.5

.5 cup of tofu: 75.5 gallons

1 apple: 17.5 gallons

Total: 704.6 gallons (2667.1 liters)

Not only are you now informed of what I ate that day, you are also now aware of the enormous amount of water used to produce each serving of food I ate.

MATERIAL WASTE (direct use only)

Toilet Paper: 26.54 grams

Papers and plastics (Starbucks cup, Auntie Anne’s paper cup, salad bowl, small plastic wrappings of purchases): 45.1 grams

Leftover food: 317 grams

Total: 388.64 grams (0.87 pounds)

A lot less than I was expecting, but if you take into account all the packaging required to ship all the food I ate, the toilet paper, the tissues, and the stuff I bought, the amount of material waste would be a lot more. I do not know how to accurately calculate my indirect uses because there is not much about this on the Internet, unfortunately.

FUEL (direct use only)

Car ride (30 min total): 0.5 gallons

Cooking the food I ate: 0.3 gallons

Total: 0.8 gallons (3.02 liters)

My direct uses are not much, but remember all the fuel used to produce the material waste and the fuel used to ship all the items I use.

ELECTRICITY (direct use only)

11 hours for an average of eight 13 watt light bulbs: 1.144 kilowatt hours

10 hours for air conditioning: 40 kilowatt hours

3 hour monitor and computer usage: 0.4 kilowatt hours

Total: 41.5 kWh

I understand the results are skewed because I calculated indirect uses of water and only direct uses for everything else. There also may be some estimation issues due to the fact that the websites I used may be incorrect, but overall I think this provides a good overview of what I actually use each day. Now that I have hard evidence, I can start tweaking my daily habits to decrease the amount of waste I generate. Hopefully this experiment was an eye opener for you all too.

Katie