Waste Consumption

I lived in a third world country the first 17 years of my life, and while I was blessed enough not to live in the conditions people from third world countries usually live in, the fact that I live around them made me really conscious about how I use everything in my everyday life. I went to Haiti over Easter, and I decided to control my waste consumption there versus my waste consumption here in the States.

I spent three days in Haiti, and while I was there, I used:

1 plastic cup for water (Which I used during the entire time I was there)
3 Paper plates during the 3 days
3 bottle of waters
5 Minutes showers

And everything else I used where "everyday" items such as forks which I washed and so on.

When I came back to the states, I drove 90 miles from the airport back to campus
Bought McDonald (1Big Mac, 1Fish, 1 Dr. Pepper, 1Large Fries)
The next day I showered 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night which I usually do every day.
Ordered one large pizza and one Dr. Pepper from papa John's
Turned on the dishwasher
Did three loads of laundry

While none of the data I collected are representative of my day to day consumption, I wanted to take a different approach and take another perspective. Your daily consumption varies a lot depending on your surrounding. The reasons most Americans consume so much on a daily basis is because everyone around them is doing the same, therefore they don't see it as a problem, whereas if you live in a third world country such as Haiti, you're going to cut back on your consumption. I think that if in America we were less focus on us and paying attention to our surrounding, a few things could change, including how much we're wasting materials in a given day.