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Do a two-week waste audit

Before you build anything, measure what your household actually throws away. Bins, compost bays and hauling trips are all sized from this number, and it shows where reduction pays off most.

How

1. Set out labelled containers for: food scraps, garden material, paper and card, metal, glass, plastic, hazardous items (batteries, oils, chemicals, electronics) and residual (everything else).
2. For 14 days, put every discarded item in the right container. If you still live on-grid, do it there: habits move with you.
3. Each evening, estimate the volume in litres (use a marked bucket) and note it in a notebook or the weekly tracker calculator below.
4. At the end, rank the categories by volume. The top two or three are your priorities for reduction and on-site processing.
5. Photograph the residual pile: it is the stuff you will have to haul off the estate, so it shows what to stop buying.
6. For scale, US EPA puts average US municipal waste at 4.9 lb (about 2.2 kg) per person per day in 2018. An off-grid household that composts and reduces packaging should aim well below its national average.

Sources

1. Sustainable Materials Management: Non-Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Hierarchy. US Environmental Protection Agency (archived snapshot), accessed 2026-11
2. National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling. US Environmental Protection Agency, accessed 2026-11

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