Waste Audit
In March, we challenged our members to undertake a waste audit with us!
In the end we had 16 members complete the audit with us over the period of one month.
The legend shows our members identity numbers- only our members will be able to recognise their own and see how they measured up against others. K1 and K2 are our two farm staff houses who also participated in the audit.
The data shows the average weekly amount over the four weeks for two people.
There were 16 categories we recorded- plastic bags, plastic bottles, styrofoam containers, flexible, diapers/ sanitary, hard plastic, newspaper/journals, cardboard, writing paper, tetra paks, local glass bottles, foreign glass bottles, metal, electronics, hazardous and food waste. There were very little electronics and hazardous items recorded so we did not include those below. The categories were chosen to reflect the current separation of waste by the unofficial collectors/recyclers that exist in Yangon,
Weekly events and visitors considerably skewed the data. But the average number of items of each category is still interesting as was the food waste data. It means that through our Food Waste Loop we are diverting about 50kg of food waste every week from our members trash to our farms compost.
Our members are mostly expats who are very aware of their environmental impact and seek ways to reduce their waste. However, we are still some of the biggest consumers in the country and therefore create more waste than many local households. The waste audit increases awareness of what we are throwing out and hopefully encourages some new ideas on how we can decrease our waste footprint.
On average our members threw out four plastic bags in a week.
On average, our members threw out three plastic bottles in a week.
On average our members threw out one styrofoam container in a week.
On average our members threw out twenty flexible items in a week.
On average, our members threw out three sanitary / diapers in a week.
On average our members threw out five hard plastic items in a week.
On average our members threw out one newspaper / journal item in a week.
On average our members threw out five items in a week.
On average our members threw out five items in a week.
On average our members threw out two items in a week.
On average our members threw out one bottle in a week.
On average our members threw out one bottle in a week.
On average members threw out six items in a week.
On average members threw out 3kg of food waste in a week.
On average members threw out 56 items of waste in a week.