Seven Days of Trash:

I collected my trash for one week, here is what I discovered

As a conscious citizen of the world, perhaps seven days of collecting trash has only proven things I am already aware of: we live in a society of gluttonous consumers- myself included. It was clear as I separated the trash that there are many insignificant characteristics of the collection I ended up with. For example, it didn’t matter much to me the colors or the materials, or even the slowness of the trash’s consumption. On a superficial level, I felt that my trash was all… just trash. However, what I did take note of is the typology of the garbage and that’s where I found the most significance. I saw very quickly that almost 95% of what I ended up with came from food and drinks. There is a lot to say about the importance of food on both a personal and social level. 

Apart from the obvious need of food for survival, food has plenty of representations in my life. The love of food and cooking was something I learned from my family. My grandmother and father played a large role in flaming my passion. Food was a comfort, a need at times, and eventually turned into an occupation as an adult. So most of my family and personal life revolved around food and shared meals. And of course, that did not stop when I moved out of my family’s home and created my own. Throughout the week, I shared almost every meal that I have prepared, late at night, early in the mornings, and whenever there was a need for comfort. 

Through the series of visualizations I have created, I attempted to separate the trash into spaces of the home. One of the most significant thing to note is the fact that the two personal spaces (the bedroom and bathroom) have the least amount of trash. Meanwhile, the shared space (kitchen, living room and dining room), the spaces that allow me to share my passion (food) have collected the most trash. I wanted to also convey that, even as the conscious citizen I believe myself to be, when all the trash was put together I was almost just as consumptive as any other gluttonous citizen. The amount of trash was arguably still too much for a home, considering me being a student and sharing my home with just my significant other.

The self-portrait was inspired by the gluttony of the Victorian age and paintings. The more beastly the feasts were, the more food you consumed, the more powerful and rich you were. In our day and age, we have not learned or evolved from this ideology (or at least most of us). And therefore in retrospect, we can understand this greed. What we can’t understand or accept is the fact that we are nonetheless greedy in consumption today. 

In conclusion, I do realize the significance of my impact on the world (just having the collected trash in a small apartment is a metaphor for the unseen collection in the world), although I come from a part of the world where the significance is placed on other more pressing issues like war, lack of electricity and water, and the absence of basic human rights. I also do realize that my trash tells a story, and our collective trash of the human race does just the same.