Am I a bad person for not liking to sort trash?

I have a secret: I love throwing things in the trash. I love going to the landfill. I consider it a luxury that we have a full-sized trashcan in our Annapolis bathroom. One of the best parts of getting ready for this trip was a major purge in preparation for our renters to move in. We got rid of some furniture, and I probably threw away 25 big bags of things we don’t use. I am not a good recycler.

I seem to have passed this love to our daughter too. Some of you know that we were the first home buyers on a new street, which meant that the developer was responsible for our trash pickup while the other homes were being built. They provided a commercial dumpster for our private use, which came in handy with all the bulk trash you generate while moving. Annalise grew attached to this dumpster and often requested that I draw her a picture of it using bath crayons. Here’s one example:

This makes me especially ill-equipped to participate in Norway’s quite impressive waste removal system. Norway instituted a ban on landfilling of organic waste in 2009, reserving landfill use for products that truly cannot be recycled, such as concrete and asbestos. I’m not sure how this is enforced, but it seems to be working. According to the Norwegian Environment Agency, around half of municipal waste is incinerated and almost all of the rest is recycled (around 30%) or composted (around 10%). Only 3.1% of Norway’s trash went to a landfill in 2022, the most recent data I’ve found. As a comparison, the EPA reports that about 50% of US waste goes to a landfill.

The impressiveness of Norway’s system doesn’t mean it’s not a pain in the ass.

We are required to sort our waste into six categories: general trash, food scraps, paper, plastic, metal, and glass. We have four containers beneath our sink and fifth that permanently lives on our counter.

This wouldn’t be so bad, except that five trash cans in a kitchen our size means each is tiny. To give a sense of scale, each of these is the same height as Gavin’s boot. Given these tiny cans, at least one of these is always full, and so the trash drawer doesn’t shut.

This inevitably means we almost always have a pile of larger trash like this one on our floor:

So, you’d think, you take it out every day. Except, we’re required to use these porous biodegradable bags for food waste, which means they leak a lot, and at least one of the cans has juice in it and has to be scrubbed out. All of this makes me want to club a baby seal.

So, sorting our trash is clearly the right thing to do, but there’s no denying it makes life a little worse.