Waste watchers

It all started with a tiny toothpick and a flimsy flap of plastic wrap.

But with that, the personal month-long garbage reduction challenge was on for Conor Leggott, who registered a toothpick as his first item, and his girlfriend, Ashley Prince, who owned up to the plastic wrap.

"That was just annoying because I never use Saran Wrap," laughs Prince, who wrapped the excess from a tuna salad mixture with it and popped it in the fridge before she realized that slip was going to count at weigh-in time.

This contest of waste reduction wills was part of a video project for Leggott's Environmental Studies course at UPEI, where the Charlottetown couple is majoring in sociology and anthropology.

Leggott happened upon the concept when sourcing films for Cinema Political, a local group he and Prince are involved with that screens documentaries about social issues.

The Clean Bin Project film was produced by a Vancouver, B.C., couple who for an entire year strived to dramatically reduced their garbage output.

Leggott contacted the couple, who gave him some tips for his 30-day project and with his girlfriend onboard he started at the end of October. For the challenge, each had one small garbage can. They were responsible for their own garbage both inside and outside the home. The packaging from anything they shared, such as a block of cheese or tray of meat, would be divided evenly.

"Compost and recycling did not count toward our totals but we still tried to cut down on that," Leggott adds.

"One thing is Kleenexes, which are compostable but it's very easy to use a lot of them. So to combat that we used handkerchiefs . . ."

They already had signed up with an organic vegetable delivery service which delivers cardboard boxes of produce right to their door.

"The guy who does it is great. He'll give us our potatoes in a net bag but when we're done with it we give it back to him and he uses it again," Leggott says.

Meat and cheese seemed to be the source of most of their food-related waste.

Then halfway through they discovered that Queen Street Meat Market wraps their product in butcher paper and string, so they then eliminated the conventional meat trays and plastic wrap.

Their trash tallying extended beyond their apartment doors.

Everything was accountable, except for waste produced at Prince's work at a bookstore, over which she had no control.

For example, if they went out for a meal and there were packets for sauces and such, they would prepare a special take-home package.

"Usually we'd have little stacks of garbage and we'd kind of get some looks, like ‘What are you doing with that?'" Prince grins.

This led to an interesting evening one particular night when they went to a local bar that was so busy the drinks were being served up in disposable non-recyclable plastic beer cups.

"So we ended up at the end of the night taking home these beer cups and (sauce) dip cups . . . We kept it all in one little bundle and then our server came by and tried to take it from us and we said no," laughs Leggott.

For much of the 30-day competition the two waste watchers were close to even until one not-so-fine night when Prince was doing the dishes after a hearty Leggott-prepared meal and the unexpected happened.

"She dropped a glass and broke it and that's probably what led to her losing," he says.

"It did," Prince confirms wholeheartedly.

"And it was his glass!"

Their starting point was a black waste cart that was half-filled to filled every two weeks.

By the end of the competition they had reduced their garbage output significantly.

Prince had amassed a total of 450 grams of garbage, but Leggott undershot her with 320 grams.

"I won (the prize being) mostly bragging rights which I use liberally," he laughs.

"Right after we finished I found that we slacked off big-time and I think it was just relief not having to pay attention to very miniscule detail. But then after Christmas and we got all that excitement over and done with we got back into the same habits we had developed - the same very small amount of garbage and being very careful with things."