Some Answers

Over the past week, i have received a ton of emails, comments, and all sorts of other contact due to the yahoo piece that ran.  It's been fairly overwhelming and I have not been able to respond to everyone the way I'd like to, so here are some responses to a few things that i have been asked (and just a few things that I wanted to throw out there).

Why are you saving your recycling? I'm saving my recycling as well as my trash due to the fact that most things that aren't actually recycled, they re downcycled, meaning they are not turned back into what they were but into lesser objects.  Fr example, plastic water bottles do not become plastic water bottles but rather park benches and plastic lumber.  Recycling, while better than throwing something away, still takes energy and resources, so no a waste project like this would be lacking if I didn't include recycling as well.

What are you going to do with everything? The trash (the 32 pounds in the cardboard boxes) will be heading to the Museum of Trash in CT and the recycling may in fact be going to an artist who is interested in turning it into a work of art.  We'll see whether this works out or not.

What do i do with cat waste? Believe it or not, quite a few people emailed me this question.  Odd that.  i didn't have  cat, but here's a good link for some good eco-cat information.

What are you going to do at the end of the year? Well, I'm certainly not going to keep listing my garbage, that's for sure.  A lot of people have asked whether I will be continuing this experiment and the answer is no.  I think I have learned what I needed to learn and have passed on a fair amount of that knowledge.  Having said that, I am presently working on a new site that will go live on 1/1 at Sustainabledave.org.  I had hired a company to create it, but let's just say they proved to be less than ethical, so I'm making it myself.  It's definitely going to be a work in progress, but my hope is to create a community of like minded individuals where we can all work together to find answers to some of these problems we face.  I'm also shooting a lot of video so it'll hopefully be simple, fun, and effective.  

I'm also writing a book called 365 Days of Solutions, and working on turning my seminar into a free download to school kids all over the world.  Stay tuned.

Why didn't you post my comment?  Well, 9 times out of ten it's because your comment was obnoxious, not because i was ducking it.  I'm really happy to post contradictory comments and even engage in dialogue with those who have posted them, but not if they are nasty, so if that was one of yours, clean it up, re-post it, and I'll gladly put it on line.

Why didn't you respond to my hate mail?  See the previous question.

What can I do to help? The best thing to do is spread the word and let me know what your thoughts are.  I'm not a trained expert on any of this, but self taught so I'm hping a community of like minded committed citizens will make this and even bigger impact.

Have you given a backpack away yet? Nope, not yet.  I'll be giving the first backpack away on 1/31 and hopefully sharing a little video of it shortly thereafter.  After that, I'll be giving away one a month.