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“Lose A Pound A Week”

The City of Madison’s Waste Reduction Program

The City of Madison has a very successful recycling program. Even though we recycled or composted over 57% of our waste stream last year, we still sent over 49,000 tons of material to the Dane County Landfill. That is 1,471 pounds of trash for each of Madison’s 67,000 households served by the Streets Division.

This large pile of trash costs Madison taxpayers $1,380,000 in landfill fees and another $544,000 to haul to the landfill.

A Trash Diet

The Streets Division wants to put Madison on a trash diet. Our goal is to get each of Madison’s 223,280 residents to reduce the amount of trash they generate by one pound each week. If we can do that we will reduce the volume of trash going to the landfill by 5,805 tons, a 12% reduction.

We are confident that Madisonians can reach the “Pound A Week” goal if they follow a simple plan. We have put together a few simple steps and lots of helpful hints to help you cut back on your trash. Some of the ideas are simple-others require some effort. But, we are convinced that in the long run the work will pay off and you will feel great about doing your part winning our war on garbage.

The Diet Plan

  1. Keep a log of what you throw away. Having a record on paper of the contents of your garbage will let you know what you are getting rid of and help you plan your trash diet.
  2. Track how much you throw out. Do this at the same time you track what you are tossing away. Count how many times you take out the trash each week or better yet, weigh each bag of trash on your bathroom scale. (Or, weigh yourself , then weigh yourself holding the bag of trash and sbutract the first weight form the second to get the weight of your trash. Keep track of the weights for two or three weeks to get an idea of how much you are throwing away.
  3. Draft a “Lose A Pound A Week” plan for your household based on the data you have collected.