Is it really waste?

One thing that seems useful to me is the cardboard from a cereal box. Upon writing this post, I just took out my trash yesterday, so having to dig through it was not terribly dreadful, as the only other thing in the trash was small scraps of paper. While it was not particularly dirty, I still handled it as if it were, using just my fingertips and placing it on a different surface right away. It has been a couple of days since I last wrote the first part of this post, and I have been able to find a use for the cardboard. The way that one of my friend’s dorms is located makes it where the Dining Commons outdoor night lights shine into his room. Therefore, they were going around asking people if they had any cardboard that he could use to make blackout curtains in their window. When it came to assembling the cardboard, I noticed that despite it being easy to tear, I instead reached for scissors. With the leftover smaller pieces that were not going to be used, I threw them into the trash can, and it wasn’t until now that I realized that they probably could still have been used just in a different way. I would say that because of the strongly individualized responsibility for handling waste, this has made it so that if I don’t plan on reusing something considered wasteful myself, I oftentimes forget that others could find a way to use it. Both the leftover cardboard and even paper scraps that surrounded it in my trash could possibly be used by the Queer Community Alliance Center’s Art Lab. I think getting rid of things always comes seasonally, even in college say for example, at the end of a year dorm cleanouts. However, the past few readings have motivated me to partake in the sharing of goods on a more consistent level. In the same way that taking out the literal trash is a weekly practice, finding places to give away things to friends or places on campus that could use such materials on a regular basis is something that I think would benefit me and others.