Personal Solutions Assignment: Solid Waste

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Personal Solutions Assignment

Solid Waste
I. Current Routine
For my solid waste measurement, I counted the number of bags or trash I threw away daily. Because I don’t eat in my dorm or do any cooking for myself, this number is probably significantly lower than the amount of waste I realistically produce. I only take out my garbage when the bag is full so not every day has data.
Over 15 days, I threw away 8 bags of waste. Each of these bags is 8-gallons and they are always full when thrown away. This comes out to be just over 4 gallons of trash a day. This graph shows the days I took out trash and how many bags of trash I disposed of. To find the amount of gallons used, the number of bags can be multiplied by 8.
II. Proposed Adjustments
A majority of the trash I’m throwing away is plastic water bottles. The reasonable solution to this would …show more content…

I can also recycle the plastic bottles I do use. I estimate that doing these two things could cut the waste I’m producing in half.
Carbon Footprint
I. Current Routine
I currently live in on-campus housing with one roommate. We each have our own room and share a living room and a bathroom. To obtain the best analysis of my energy usage, I only recorded when the lights were on in my room rather than when any light in the dorm was on. I couldn’t find an exact answer on what light bulbs were in the fixtures in my room, but my best estimate that they are 32-watt, T8 fluorescent bulbs. There are four of them in total with two bulbs per light fixture. When I’m in my room, I keep both light fixtures on.
At the end of two weeks, I had my lights on for 5,882 minutes or about 98 hours. Running 4, 32-watt light bulbs for 98 hours comes out to 12.544 kWh. The equivalent amount of coal this takes is 3.4 pounds. This graph is the number of hours I had lights on in my

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