Oscar the Grouch lived every day in his garbage can, surrounded by filth, bird feces, cookie crumbs, Elmo and hypodermic needles (Snuffleupagus loved his smack!). But what if he and all of Sesame Street were covered with 245.7 million tons of trash, which is what the EPA estimated Americans generated in 2005?

Environmental studies, policy and management senior Alison Luedtke knows what life would be like, sort of. From Oct. 19 to Nov. 2, Luedtke carried around all the garbage she consumed as part of a project to see how much trash people actually go through.

The idea for the project came from the National Public Radio program Marketplace, where host Tess Vigeland carried around her trash last year as part of an MPR series, “Consumed,” about environment sustainability.

Luedtke heard about it in a class last year, she says. This year she is part of Higher Education Consortium of Public Affairs (HECUA). She says she chose to do this for a HECUA project that gets an environmental message out to the public.

“My first idea was to green up the restaurant I work at,” Luedtke says. “But it was a big restaurant, making it something too daunting.”

Of course, there came stipulations, such as no doggie or kitty poo, no bringing the trash into places she could get kicked out of and a few others. At first, she says, there was not very much since she has made a personal effort to cut down her consumption. Her roommate, Concordia-St. Paul student Tiffany Martini, had mixed feelings about the project.

“I was a little disgusted,” Martini says. “The trash part I’m okay with it, but the apple and pear cores, that kind of grossed me out.”

As the days wore on, the trash grew and grew. She divided it into two categories, compost and garbage. Around day 10, she remembers one of her bags breaking open at a bus stop on Washington Avenue and one person’s reaction to her rubbish.

“This guy came up to me to ask something about bus scheduling,” Luedtke says. “He was really friendly at first, and then he looked down and saw my garbage and he just walked away. He thought I was a creepy person for carrying my garbage.”

Sometimes, Luedtke says, she would forget the bags in her classes, and it would be moved outside due to its stench. She even was late for her internship sometimes, because she forgot it at home and ran back to pick it up.

“What surprised me was the frustration and personal anxiety I felt from carrying around this trash,” Luedtke says. “About seven days into it, I just had this aha moment because I was so weighed down by this trash.”

Luedtke says the message she wanted to spread was that our view of trash as something inevitable is not correct, and we should think about how much we are consuming. She says she would like everyone to try this project, even for just a week.

“Every choice you make as a consumer feeds into that,” Luedtke says. “It can make the difference between making a lot of waste and making a little. It’s a simple change that everyone can make to create less waste.”

Tags: environment