Rural Land and Dealing with Trash

[tx_floods]

I've got a topic I'd like for Jack to address in one of his shows: Living on rural land and dealing with trash, when no curbside service exists. Most of us probably desire to have our BOL or primary property to be out in the country. When I was a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma, dealing with our trash was always a huge headache. Burning trash was messy and probably not very good for the environment, as we didn't sort paper from other trash. A trip to the nearest city dump always involved a huge amount of labor, as we waited until we had a full pick-up load, (With sidewalls built) and also a trailer. Recycling services weren't as widely available then, though we did sort out our aluminum cans.

I wonder how the TSP community deals with their trash? Any thoughts are appreciated on this topic.

[Uncle Bob (he ain’t right)]

There are trash service companies in most rural areas, also there are municipal recycling centers in most areas as well. If I use the county recycling center, they will take my trash at $1.00 a bag.
Most trash when separated is recyclable or compostable.
Very little is not reusable in some way.

[fratermus]

With a bunch of land available, I'd seriously consider composting suitable paper with the other organics, and seperating out metals for $$$ recycling.  Might pay for the gas money. 

[Morning Sunshine]

Don't buy stuff with "trash" - buy bigger bulk items = less garbage.  buy raw ingredients instead of processed = less garbage.  no conspicuous consumption = less garbage.
burn the paper (or recycle it), recycle the metal and plastic, maybe you are lucky and your recycle place takes glass (ours does not, but I have noticed fewer glass containers recently anyway, now that I want glass, all I can find are plastic!)
compost the compostables; feed the chickens, pigs, dogs, etc. other stuff.  get some black soldier flies for the meats and greases.
what do you have left?  not a lot.

My aunt lives on the side of a mountain without garbage.  she does most the above, and she also has a trash compacter in her kitchen.  So anything that is not burnable or feed for other critters, goes into the trash compactor.  they only fill one of those bags about every 2-3 weeks.  (warning - do not put a wet or dirty diaper in there.  all it does is squish out the liquids and make a stinky nasty gross mess.)  You could almost get away with throwing one bag into a friend's garbage can down in the city, if they will let you, once or twice a month.

even with 4 children - one in diapers - we only fill our big black garbage can every 3-4 weeks.  we can go 4 weeks without taking it up the hill, but that is really pushing its capacity.  We are the largest family on the mountain here, and everyone else has 2 cans outside every week.  so we have 1/4 the amount of garbage of everyone else.  the only thing I can figure is that we just generate less garbage.  We do manage to fill our recycle can every other week for pickup, but then so does everyone else.

[fndrbndr]

We started recycling 3 or 4 years ago, and we have way less trash now. We bought one of those big rolls of trash bags from Costco 2 years ago, and we still have half the roll left.

[chris]

Very little is not reusable in some way.

This is the paradigm shift most people need to understand. Very little is not reusable in some way, to the benefit of your homestead.

[Herbalpagan]

We have found that living in the country, trash IS a big part of life. It costs us to get a dump permit ($35) each year. Then everything that is thrown away has to go into a town bag ($1 ea).
We now, buy a lot of stuff in bulk. We have both a wood stove and a burn barrel for paper goods. We compost a lot. AND we recycle.
We've found that trash must be taken care of in a timely manner, due to wild life (bears).  We burn everything we can in either the stove or the barel.

It's just a matter of making the time to do it right, reuse what we can and getting into the habit. It's not all that bad and I'd rather have this kind of worry than have to deal with living in a town.

[Pathfinder]

When I had my cattle ranch, most of the time anything we couldn't use we would burn in a 55 gal drum. It wasn't much, so we didn't burn much or very often. The drum usually rusted out before becoming full. Besides, we had droughts a number of the years there, so a burn ban was in effect for many of the summers and falls.

The previous owner had dug a big pit up on the flats well above the water (small creek). We used that for odds and ends that we didn't or couldn't burn, and covered it with dirt. One time I took some feed bags up there - burn ban - and when I tossed them in, something in the pit moved. I never went up there unarmed again! 

The folks in town took to putting locks and chains on their dumpsters cuz people would drive in, usually at night, and dump their garbage in someone else's dumpster - which the people had to pay for. I remember coming into town one day and someone had dumped an old range in an alley right off the main street. The town dump also charged by the load and type of material, rudimentary recycling. Tires, electronics, and similar stuff got charged their own fees, regular garbage was another.

[LvsChant]

Don't buy stuff with "trash" - buy bigger bulk items = less garbage.  buy raw ingredients instead of processed = less garbage.  no conspicuous consumption = less garbage.

...even with 4 children - one in diapers - we only fill our big black garbage can every 3-4 weeks.  we can go 4 weeks without taking it up the hill, but that is really pushing its capacity.  We are the largest family on the mountain here, and everyone else has 2 cans outside every week.  so we have 1/4 the amount of garbage of everyone else.  the only thing I can figure is that we just generate less garbage.  We do manage to fill our recycle can every other week for pickup, but then so does everyone else.

We currently live in a neighborhood with weekly trash pickup, but I have noticed the same thing... we just don't generate as much trash as the rest of the neighborhood... There are a few families that have 2 or 3 of the big rolling trash cans (provided by the company) that are filled to overflowing each week. Unless it is unusual, we normally don't have more than 1/3 of the can full each week.

I think it may, in large part, be because we don't buy a lot of fast food or prepared food at the grocery store. Since I make almost everything from scratch and buy bulk foods, we just don't have the amount of wrapping trash as other folks. Frugal living benefits us and the environment!

[apainter]

I have a mini-incinerator from http://www.burnrightproducts.com kind of $$$ but it works well.

[EMichael]

There are three types of trash:
 - Things that burn
 - Things that rot
 - Everything else

When you break this down, you will find there really isn't that much trash in the final category.  All the rot stuff will generally end up in a compost pile.  And all the burn stuff ends up in a burn barrel.

In regard to burning stuff, my local fuel & oil company sells used 55 gallon barrels with no tops for around $10.  Grungy, nasty, and just perfect to light a fire in.

To make the barrel burn efficiently, the barrel needs adequate airflow.  If you really want to get rid of stuff, turn it into a functional incinerator.  Grab your handy hole saw and make a 2" or so sized hole into the barrel about 10" from the bottom.  Mount a pipe fitting or two and a short length of metal pipe.  When you are ready to burn, attach a leaf blower to the barrel, using a few feet of scrap PVC.  A little duct tape, and it will work just fine.

With this type of burn barrel you can get rid of anything which burns but would normally stink up the neighborhood.  Get the fire going, and then crank up the leaf blower.  This will introduce plenty of oxygen into the fire and burn clean (no smoke).  A smoldering fire is what generates the bad gasses, a hot fire doesn't do that.  Plus the burn is completed quickly - no wasting the entire day tending a fire.

Okay, a disclaimer...  I do not admit to burning stuff which should not be burned.  I am simply suggesting a technical way to do so. 

Besides, a few years ago the local fire department did a controlled practice burn on an old manufactured home down the street.  Tar roofing tiles, vinyl siding, the whole works up in smoke.  If they can burn those types of materials, the rest of us should be able to do so as well.

[texican]

"Recycling" might be fine and dandy, if you live in a metro area, where the citizens have banded together and pay extra taxes for 'recycling'.

Out here in flyover country, recycling costs more than it's worth.  I only know of one recycling station within an hour of here... a multi bin dumpster at a Walmart supercenter.

Locally, we have battling services to collect rural trash... they compete fiercely.  Our county has a refuse collection center... they take everything but tires and batteries...

It is true, that everything is recyclable... key is, finding someone that wants the plastic, paper, or glass.  Not many folks will go to the trouble or sorting, if it's all going into the back of the same garbage truck...

I carry stuff to the elevated dumpster (county waste center) once or twice a month.

TEOTWAWKI arrives, my garbage/trash load would drop to zero in weeks... No garbage in, no garbage out.  Currently, zero edible waste leaves the place... dogs, chickens, goats consume anything consumable.  Post TEOTWAWKI, I'd burn anything without any further usage... paper would go into the mulch pile, broken glass would go into a hole in the ground.  Everything else would be used up, till nothing was left.

[“Mark”]

To make the barrel burn efficiently, the barrel needs adequate airflow.  If you really want to get rid of stuff, turn it into a functional incinerator.  Grab your handy hole saw and make a 2" or so sized hole into the barrel about 10" from the bottom.  Mount a pipe fitting or two and a short length of metal pipe.  When you are ready to burn, attach a leaf blower to the barrel, using a few feet of scrap PVC.  A little duct tape, and it will work just fine.

With this type of burn barrel you can get rid of anything which burns but would normally stink up the neighborhood.  Get the fire going, and then crank up the leaf blower.  This will introduce plenty of oxygen into the fire and burn clean (no smoke).  A smoldering fire is what generates the bad gasses, a hot fire doesn't do that.  Plus the burn is completed quickly - no wasting the entire day tending a fire.

Okay, a disclaimer...  I do not admit to burning stuff which should not be burned.  I am simply suggesting a technical way to do so. 

Be very careful with such a setup if you are burning any kind of paper. Even without a leaf blower, a hole in the bottom will produce enough airflow once the fire gets going to send little flaming bits up into the air. Most will burn out while airborne, but...

[OKGranny]

burying glass doesn't actually work too well, at least with our soil. The previous owners of our rural property did that evidently for years and starting the second or third year we were here it started coming to the surface. Since we had kids running around barefoot at least half the time I can't tell you how many hours I spent over then next decade crawling around on my hands and knees picking up pieces of glass off the acre and a half we use for our yard. I guess it would be fine if you were to make sure none of it broke, then in a hundred years or so if anyone's left they can dig up 'treasures'.

[“Mark”]

You could always grind the glass and use it concrete instead of rock. It is silica after all.

[Hans]

We have a farm in Indiana that has been in the family for almost 60 years. At no point in all that time has there ever been any sort of garbage pickup. Garbage has always been dealt with by separation and burning. Everything combustable, paper, cardboard, plastic etc. is burned in a barrel. Glass is separated out and smashed on a pile behind the old chicken house, and metal cans were smashed and tossed into a hopper and my Grandfather would drive them into town after he'd saved up a pickup load.

Whenever they were spreading manure, we'd throw the ashes from the fire barrel in the manure spreader with a load of fertilizer and spread them across the fields. When the broken glass pile got too big, which I only recall happening once when I was a kid, my grandfather would did a big pit out on the edge of the back field and bury it.

[Ozark Bound]

Great thread!

Ok, here are a couple of things that I have considered once I get my own spot in the country.

Paper - making papercrete blocks to build the sheds/barns, etc (google papercrete, I think it may be the way to go)
I am reluctant to put paper in compost due to the poison inks.  Need to research that more to find out if it breaks down.

Glass - I like Mark Rose's idea of putting it in concrete, or could put it in the papercrete blocks...hmmm.  Also, can use glass bottles like you would cordwood.  In fact, if you are already in the country, someone may want them to use just for that purpose. 

Plastic - this one is the one I am unsure about.  But I am thinking putting it in the wood chipper and making mulch, or it could also go into the papercrete. 

Metals - cash those in.

If you could recycle all of these items, the rest are easy because they are compostable.

Once you try to make your own papercrete and figure out what works to build with, this could actually be a decent biz for anyone willing to try it.  Making papercrete blocks for people to use for building.  Ya never know. 

I just learned about papercrete this past month and am going to experiment this summer with it on a small scale to see how it works.  I need to build a retaining wall so I figured it may be a good place to start with it.

Sorry if my noob is showing.  These are just ideas and may not be workable.
Sharon

[Cool Blue]

You could always grind the glass and use it concrete instead of rock. It is silica after all.

Broken glass can be pushed into grout on walls or countertops. You could do mosaics.

Some alternative homes like earthships use glass bottles/jar and concrete to make walls that can let light through.

Coloured glass would look nice if used this way.

[outlawbiker]

that is so cool, and it makes little homes for small critters. ;

[War_Eagle]

I've got a topic I'd like for Jack to address in one of his shows: Living on rural land and dealing with trash, when no curbside service exists. Most of us probably desire to have our BOL or primary property to be out in the country. When I was a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma, dealing with our trash was always a huge headache. Burning trash was messy and probably not very good for the environment, as we didn't sort paper from other trash. A trip to the nearest city dump always involved a huge amount of labor, as we waited until we had a full pick-up load, (With sidewalls built) and also a trailer. Recycling services weren't as widely available then, though we did sort out our aluminum cans.

I wonder how the TSP community deals with their trash? Any thoughts are appreciated on this topic.

In our case, we make so little trash, it's really not a problem. When we do have trash, one of my retailers is nice enough to let us use his trash dumpster. Once a month or so, I'll take a couple of bags when I make my deliveries and throw them in his dumpster.

[Jason from PA]

If I had the land I would build the following setup...

I would build out of cinder block, clay or some other material large bins. 20'x20'x20', and each of these would be for a different type of waste.

All glass would go into one, all plastics in another, all paper in a third, all organics in another, and all metal in a fifth.

The organics would become my compost.  Papers would either get processed into the compost as well. Or possibly pressed into burnables.  I'd then have a couple options. I could periodically sell the glass, plastics and metals to a recycler. Or in a TEOTWAWKI situation I would build a furnace and using the plastics and papers as fuel to melt down the glass and metal.

[LdMorgan]

Be very careful with such a setup if you are burning any kind of paper. Even without a leaf blower, a hole in the bottom will produce enough airflow once the fire gets going to send little flaming bits up into the air. Most will burn out while airborne, but...

Yup--a heavy wire screen is always a good idea on a burn barrel. We use a piece of old diagonal-mesh expanded metal. It's held up for years. It makes the local fire department very happy, too.

An ordinary hair dryer will work in place of a leaf blower. So will a car vac. Just pull the guts out and leave only the fan and motor. If you need a hot fire, wire it straight up to a car battery. The little fan motors are 12v, and they can push some serious air.

I used to run a forge with one, a hair dryer, back when I was beating up on perfectly defenseless iron.

Nowadays, we get all our trash hauled for free--whatever we can't burn, compost, sell, or feed to the chickies.

A friend lets us drop our stuff in his bins.

It's an arrangement we made over ten years ago after the local trash company kind of cheated me outrageously.

It's legal, since he pays for X-many bins a week and never fills them all himself, and having the Bad Guys Trash Co. hauling all my garbage for free (forever!) is a source of never-ending joy to me.

Revenge is a dish best served perpetually...

[Noah Darco]

This topic has become timely, again, because of the diminishing number of commercial and state-sponsored recycling programs, as explained in this article, published in the Washington Post last year. This comes as no surprise, if you think about the math and the logistics.

We live at the end of the line, so to speak, way out the back of beyond in flyover country out West, and local options for recycling have been dropping like flies as of late. A local non-profit has stopped taking plastic (apparently it wasn't very profitable), and the big-box store in town that used to recycle glass recently put an end to that (ditto).

The sole local waste pickup company provides a wheeled bin, and does one pickup a month curbside for a base price, with any additional pickups costing extra. Our family of six managed to keep it down to one pickup a month, but now glass and plastic have to go in the bin, too.

We buy local ag products where possible, but with four growing kids we inevitably end up with some packaging to dispose of.

I have considered buying a giant, wall-mounted plastic crusher, or possibly a second-hand trash compactor, just to keep in the garage to crush plastic. We could smash glass containers to reduce their size, but we don't have space for a dump on our acre, and part of the goal here is to keep the time and money spent on throwing things away at a minimum. I'm trying to think of a way to smash glass that wouldn't require an inordinate amount of cleanup. I guess we could put glass bottles in the bottom of a metal drum and drop a heavy rock or weight on them...

I understand that you can make crafts and Earthships out of glass bottles, but we have limited space, and, frankly, so much to do and keep track of on the homestead that hoarding a big pile of glass bottles would just be one more pile of junk and one more open loop on my brain.

Has anyone in a similar situation come up with any novel solutions as of late?

[I.L.W.]

For thermoplast (plastics that melt, not burn), there are a number of home recycling projects and products you can look at. They're used in several designs to create stock for 3d printing (which is becoming a must-have homestead tool).

Before glass recycling, it was ground up and mixed into concrete used for sidewalks. Go to the older parts of town and you can see it in 60+ year old sidewalks that are still standing today. It makes concrete mixes much stronger. In terms of ecology, recycling glass is actually a negative when you consider the energy to transport, melt, etc. It only makes sense in states which implement a bottle deposit AND use the revenue to subsidize metals recycling, which is presently only two states. So yeah... if you can use glass, don't toss it in the recycling bin. Reuse wine bottles for your home brew, and you can usually repurpose glass jars (just buy products with a standard lid type).

Papers are obvious, they go in the compost pile, or under mulch layers as a weed block. No need to ever throw out paper, cardboard etc. People used to say "don't compost things with color printing", but that's outdated advice. In the old days inks contained lead or cobalt, today they're soy-based with organic pigments, not heavy metals. Anyone printing from the pantone color set (newspapers, magazines, packaging companies etc) are using compostable inks.

Likewise, all food wastes can be composted (even fats and meat if you have a large compost pile). People who caution against that talking about 4'x4' piles you'd see in suburbia. If you're rural, you likely have something orders of magnitude larger and a few mice won't hurt anything. Pigs and chickens can also reduce food waste very well, or even a small worm bin. That's a non-issue.

Metals, you have a few choices here. This is the one material which make economic and ecological sense to put in the recycle bin (or take to a scrap yard). Look on YouTube and you can also find DIY plans for a small forge where you can melt those metals down into ingots for your own use, or just to conserve space until you can make a trip to the scrap yard. If that's overkill for your family's uses, a simple hand-powered can-crusher works fine.

90% of waste is yard waste (tree branches etc). These are actually good in a landfill in that they make any future remediation efforts easier by chelating many contaminants, but they fill up the landfill pretty quickly and are costly to remove. Just use a wood chipper on anything too small for firewood.

Old furniture and appliances are the next big items. I've found it preferable to buy wooden furniture with removable cushions, compared to the lazy boy type chairs and couches. Spend the money on good furniture and you're not throwing couches out to the curb every few years. Appliances can be sent to a scrapper of posted for free on craigslist (someone will fix it up).

The only remaining landfill items are styrofoam and thermoset plastics. If you can, avoid disposable items containing these materials when making a purchase. If you actually work at it a bit, you can get garbage down to a 6 month schedule.

In terms of smashing glass - a $99 harbor freight electric concrete mixer, a brick and a spray of water (to keep dust down) will reduce bottles to dust in about 40 minutes.

[mountainmoma]

Maybe you can also change habits on what you purchase ? Maybe start with the one item that is your largest glass waste producer and make that one item at home or buy in bulk ? I like the reduce glass to dust in previous post for the meantime. I did serious waste reduction here, and every household buys different items, so will vary for you, of course. We did this:

- Bought 5 gallon bucket of dishwashing detergent, so fill up the container by sink, and when this bucket is empty, I always need 5 gallon bucket outside on the homestead. Same for laundry detergent. I bought mine from Azure Standard (online ordering, once a month bulk delivery to drop points across the country).

- I also buy my soy sauce in a 5 gallon container as this just gets better with age in any case, I refill the glass bottle in the kitchen, and this container when empty makes a good water storage container.

- I buy Toilet paper by the case, thru Azure, these rolls are wrapped in paper, in a cardboard box, so all packaging can be sheet mulched on the land

- Dry goods bought by the 25-50lb bag and stored in 5 gallon buckets with gamma lids, so no plastic packaging there any more.

- We eventually started to keep our own dairy goats, and I use mason jars I wash and re-use for milk, so no more trash there.

- I, over time, keep adding to what I make at home. So, at first I canned all our jams. Then added all the diced tomatoes, which were my 2 most used canned goods. I make my own mayonaise, super easy in the blender, but I havent found a mustard recipe I like, so still buy this. I now can and dry many things.

- I tried the shampoo bar to use instead of plastic bottled shampoo, and I like it. I also buy this at azure and no packaging to get rid of, same with bulk bought bar soap.

- Buying dehydrated tomato powder to keep and use in the pantry saves room, waste and packaging. I use this instead of tomato paste or sauce, depending how much water is added, as I only can diced tomatoes, I dont sit around and cook down and reduce tomatoes !

- I tried my hand at fermenting last year, and the wine turned out well. If wine or beer bottles are your largest category, learning to home brew might save you money and waste packaging. I just used the push-in corks (T ones) in the wine I made, and these can be re-used, and keep it on its side absolutely until it hits the refrigerator, and it is doing well, and this was easy and used little equipment

[Cedar]

I precycle. I think I have mentioned it elsewhwhere, but if I can't buy bulk, and have to buy in a package, and will pay more for something I can utilize for something else. For instance I have bought VOSS water bottles because they are glass, not plastic, and I have reused those bottles hundreds of times, keeping from buying plastic, or having to try to recycle plastic...plus I hate anything dealing with most plastics near my foods. In six years I have only broken one of those VOSS bottles even though I take them hiking and with me most days.

Even if you have rural garbage service, often you do not have recycling pickup service, so every week or so, I make a rechecking run. Where I have lived in the past, it might have been a month and hundreds of pounds of recycling to haul 30 miles into town. My garbage is usually five pounds a month for SP and me. Sometimes less. With this small amount, it is fairly easy to get away without garbage service.

Change your lifestyle to include less garbage or potential garbage in it. Leave packaging at the stores recyclng bins before you take it home. It takes a little time to get used to shopping this  way,  just like reading labels, but soon it takes no time at all and part of your "norm".

Cedar

[r_w]

Yeah, I feel your pain.

We still create a lot of trash, plastic seems to be everywhere.  We are reducing it. 

I have a friend that has his family of ten down to a standard plastic grocery bag every few days.  It get dropped in the gas station trash when he fills up.

[Stwood]

Good thread.
We try to buy in bulk.
We save whatever we think can be reused.
We use a burn barrel.
We also have a dug pit. We burn in it also when necessary.

[kckndrgn]

  It get dropped in the gas station trash when he fills up.

funny, that's what my mom does with her trash, course she lives alone.

My wife and I were talking about this the other day, we are amazed at how fast our garbage bags fill up.  We don't have trash service (too expensive) so once a week we take our trash to the dump.  For 1 -3 bags it's $2.00, for 4-6 bags it's $3.00.  Trash service in our area starts around $30.00 per month, so we save money by taking it ourselves.

When we first moved in to our house in Dec we got a barrel and burned the paper/cardboard.  We quickly found that having to babysit the barrel while it was going was a waste of time so we started sending everything to the dump.  Maybe not the best solution, but it works for us.

And yes we really do try to reduce our waste, just seems like everything is wrapped or boxed these days.

[r_w]

This year I am going to compost all the paper.  We will see how it goes.