Consumed: Is our Consumer Culture Sustainable?

Tess Vigeland: My editor suggested it to me back in January. He said, "We're going to have a special coming up next fall. Would you be willing to carry your trash around?" And at the time I said, "Oh, yeah, sure. Why not?" So nothing came of it until July and then they reminded me and said, "You know, you said back in January that you'd carry your trash around." I said, "Oh, I did? Okay." And the "Consumed" series is all about whether our consumer culture is sustainable. And on Marketplace Money, we're really looking at the end of the consumption chain. We buy all this stuff and eventually a good chunk of it ends up in landfills. So we thought this would be a very vivid way of illustrating how much we throw away. So I challenged our listeners back in September to join me for two weeks carrying their trash around, and a lot of people did, actually. It was amazing, the response we received. For my part, I learned all sorts of things about what's recyclable and what's not, differences from state to state and city to city, what you can recycle and what you can't and also how tough it is to keep a lean, mean garbage bag.

CP: As you were carrying your trash around, what sorts of reactions would you get?

TV: I got some funny looks when I was wandering around running errands around town. For the most part, places that I went--when I went out to dinner or to the mall--I exempted those places. I knew I would get kicked out anyway if I walked in with this stinky bag of garbage. My friends certainly made fun of me. They had nicknames for me: “Bag Lady,” “Mess Vigeland,” “Trash Vigeland.” I did have a couple of people recognize what I was doing and, you know, wanted to know how it was going, wanted to know what I was learning.

CP: What, other than recycling differences, did you learn?

TV: I learned that it takes a lot of forethought to break yourself of bad habits. For example, using tissues, paper tissues. I ended up having a really bad allergy attack in the middle of The Trash Challenge--fall allergies here in LA. My bag started filling up with paper tissues and eventually I started using a hanky, which I’ve never done in my entire life, but it’s certainly more environmentally friendly. The gross-out factor is still there for me. You know, it forced me to think about where all those tissues were going to end up. I did find out that those are compostable as long as you don’t buy them bleached. So it was a great learning experience in a very short time span from what I can do with our cat poo, which I also exempted from carrying around to what I can do with our now infamous chicken bones because that was the thing that was stinking up the joint. There are methods you can deal with waste without putting it in a trash bag, but they’re not always obvious and you really have to make an effort to keep that trash generation down.

CP: Why is trash a problem in the United States?