The U.S. is the world's leader in garbage generation with each American averaging about 4.5 pounds of garbage per day. Do the math and that adds up to a heck of a lot of waste. Try to reduce the amount of garbage you throw away each week by simply thinking before you toss it.

Create your garbage inventory. It may sound a little silly, but knowing how much and what you're throwing away is the first step in figuring out what you can change.

• How much garbage do you generate? Count how many times you take the trash out per week or weigh the bag on the bathroom scale to find out how much it weighs. Write it down. After two or three weeks you should have a pretty good idea of how much you are throwing away. Knowing this will allow you to make a household goal of creating less trash in the following weeks.
• What are you tossing? Write down what you are throwing out. Having a record on paper of the contents of your garbage will let you know what you are getting rid of. For example, if you find you're throwing away a lot of food that goes bad before you have a chance to eat it you can change your cooking and buying habits to cut down on that waste. Or you might find you're throwing away things that can be put in the recycling bin instead.

Compost. Before you toss food scraps in the garbage or disposal, think about composting. Or if you don't want to start your own compost bin, find a community compost area or see if your local solid waste division accepts food waste for compost. In Seattle, residents can put food waste in a yard waste bin for pick up.

Re-use or recycle everything you can. Can what you're throwing away be re-used for another purpose? Can it be recycled? Many municipal recycling centers offer free reference guides you can keep near the garbage can or recycling bin to see what can and can not be recycled in your area. As for re-use, some items such as milk jug caps or yogurt containers and other bits and pieces are handy for craft projects. Ask your child's teacher if they can use any of these things and start collecting.

Buy goods with less packaging. Look for containers and packaging that can be recycled, such as cardboard (even better if it is made from post-consumer recycled content). Buy bulk food. You can get nuts, grains, beans and other dry goods in bulk in many places. This way you buy only what you need with a lot less packaging.

For the garbage you do throw away, purchase compostable, biodegradable garbage bags made from corn plastics such as BioBag. (FYI: there is some controversy about whether or not these biodegradable plastics perform the way they should in a landfill, ie. breakdown faster than regular plastics). Another option is to buy trash bags made from recycled plastic, such as Seventh Generation's bags made from 70% post-consumer and 30% pre-consumer plastic.

If you really want to break your garbage habit, try carrying your waste around with you for a week. Ben Jervey, author of the Green Big Apple: Your Guide to Eco-friendly Living in New York, wrote in Good magazine's inaugural issue about his month-long extreme urban environmentalism experiment. This included carrying his garbage with him everywhere. While it may not be practical, it'll really get you thinking about what and how much you're throwing away.

Amy says: I've still got a long way to go on this one. I currently re-use those dastardly plastic shopping bags as my garbage bags. However, the more I remember to bring my own cloth bags to tote my groceries home, the less plastic bags I'm going to accumulate. So I'll need to re-think my own waste stream.

Green Options related links:
Marc Gunther: The End of Garbage

Garbage Pollution Not Just a Modern Issue
Lighter Footstep: Five Ways to Fight Retail Overpackaging
Mobile Electric Generator Runs on Trash
Weekly DIY: Build Your Own Worm Composting Bin
Kicking the Habit: Plastic Bags
Solid Waste 101: What Can't You Throw Away?
II. Solid Waste Management, Reduction, Reuse and Recycling
Tip o' the Day: Refrigerate that Compost!
How To Start Your Own Compost Pile
Green Myth-Busting: Recycling

Tip o' the Day: We Can't Put the Milk Back in the Cow