Dealing With Trash in an RV (So Far)

We've been on the road for 2 weeks now. We started our journey with a 4-day stay at Palmetto State Park, then a few days in San Antonio, followed by 5 days in Corpus Christi, split between Denise's folk's house, Malaquite Beach, and Mustang Island State Park. In that time, we've made quite a bit of trash. This is how we're dealing with it.

A week's worth of trash from our first week on the road, from left recyclable material, compostable material, and landfill trash, bottom right is Kimbo's poop. We used to compost and recycle most of our waste when we lived in a house. This volume has been typical over the past weeks.

Since we're still figuring out how to live as efficiently as possible on the road, we've been making more trash than I'd like. Plus, we're still acquiring things to make our life on the road comfortable and organized, and virtually everything comes in some sort of packaging. When we lived in a house, we often picked things up on the side of the road during bulk trash pickups, found things on Craigslist or at thrift stores. That's not nearly as easy in an RV.

You can't take two steps on a beach without seeing trash. That's why

we always carry a bag or two whenever we walk the shore.

Every park we've visited has had large landfill dumpsters. It's surprising to us that none of the parks  have recycling bins. One park had a place for aluminum cans. Composting has not been available.

The big black bag on the left is filled with recyclable material. It'll probably always contain the most material. So far we've been dropping off our recyclable material at residences we visit. 

The bag in the center is filled with kitchen scraps for composting. We keep it in the freezer so it won't decompose or stink before we can get it to a compost pile. The first week we dropped off our compostable material at my mom's house in San Antonio -- the city has recently rolled out a city-wide curbside compost pickup program. The following week we dropped off our organic waste at a farmers market. I had to ask several vendors before I finally found someone willing to take it.

At far right is our landfill waste -- it's way more than I'm comfortable with because we've bought a lot of convenience foods, like packaged salads, prepared soups, and canned foods.

Tristin from Earth and Water Farms in Orange Grove, Texas took our
bag of frozen compostable material when we visited a farmers market.

At bottom right are two days worth of Kimbo poop. It all goes to the landfill in plastic bags, which I'm not happy about.

When we had a full kitchen and garden, it was easy to process whole foods, which greatly reduced our landfill waste. There were weeks when we wouldn't even set the can out because there was so little, and we had the smallest size can Austin offers: a 24-gallon cart. Chickens and compost piles took care of organic waste -- we even composted Kimbo's poop, which kept our decorative garden healthy.

I'm happy with the way we're handling our kitchen scraps, but I wish I could find a way to keep Kimbo's poop out of the landfill. One of my goals is to find ways to reduce our landfill use by connecting with gardeners and farmers markets on the road while relying less on packaged foods. A dream would be to encourage other RVers to recycle and compost.

Traveling full time in an RV has already been an adventure but there is lots of room for improvement to make the adventure of our dreams.

Related

• Food Waste in an RV
• Carbon Footprint: House vs. RV